Best Laid Schemes
by Don Sample
Summary: Sirius Black has his own plan to protect the infant Harry Potter.
1. Prologue: November 1, 1981

_Acknowledgements:_ Buffyverse characters are the creation of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Potterverse characters are the creation of J. K. Rowling.

_**Best Laid Schemes**_

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang aft agley.  
— Robert Burns, To a Mouse

**Prologue: November 1, 1981**

Sirius Black watched from the shadows as Professor Dumbledore turned and walked away. He watched the old wizard pause at the end of the street, take his silver Put-Outer from his pocket, and click it once. He saw the twelve balls of light return to the street lights of Privet Drive. The restored lights revealed the tabby cat that was Professor McGonagall as she slunk around the corner at the other end of the street. He heard Dumbledore's murmured "Good luck, Harry" before the Headmaster turned away for the last time, and vanished with a swish of his cloak.

Sirius snorted. "Good luck, my arse!" There was no luck waiting for Harry in _that_ house. He'd known what Dumbledore planned to do with Harry, now that James and Lily were dead, and there was no way he was going to let his godson be raised by _those_ Muggles. He'd met Petunia Evans, and the idiot she'd married. He knew what dreadful parents they were, and he knew how much they hated the very thought of magic. There was no way in Hell that he'd let _them_ raise Harry.

He had let Hagrid take Harry away from the ruined house in Godric's Hollow because he knew that he would never win the argument with Dumbledore. He never had, in all the years that he'd known the man. So he had developed his own method of doing things that he knew the Headmaster wouldn't agree to. It was summed up by the simple motto, "It's easier to get forgiveness, than permission."

He'd put his own plan into action immediately. It had started with a trip to the west coast of America. That was about as far away as he could go, and still make it back to England in time. He thought that Australia or New Zealand would have been better, but they were just too far. California would have to do. He'd found the child there: about Harry's age, same size, with the same tousled hair. His spell would work best if there was already some resemblance between the two of them.

It had taken a simple spell to render the baby's mother unconscious. Another, gentler one, was performed on the child to keep him quiet while Sirius whisked him back to Little Whinging.

Sirius hadn't only trusted the shadows to hide him and the child from Dumbledore and McGonagall. He made sure that his invisibility cloak was wrapped around them both when he carried the baby up to the front of the house and laid him on the porch beside Harry's basket. The old man had some things to learn about stealth. He'd be surprised if none of the neighbours had called the power company to report that the street lights had gone out. You'd never catch a Marauder drawing attention to himself that way.

Sirius unfolded the baby's blanket, spreading it out across the porch. He lifted Harry from the basket and laid him on the blanket beside the boy.

The spell he used was one that he and James had discovered during one of their late night research sessions in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library. It was tricky to cast, but it was one that they had found dead useful, many times. Better than Polyjuice for disguising someone. There was no awful potion that had to be drunk, and the effect would last until the right counter-spell was cast. When done properly it exchanged one person's appearance for another's. When Sirius was finished, the boy he had brought from California looked just like Harry, right down to the lightning shaped cut from Voldemort's curse on his forehead. Harry looked just like the boy.

Sirius placed the boy into Harry's basket. "Sorry to do this to you, fella," he whispered, "but you'll have a better life here than Harry would. _You_ won't be doing any accidental magic to upset these Muggles." He chuckled. "The wizarding world is going to be shocked in a few years, though, when they learn that their Boy Who Lived seems to be a Squib." He tucked the blankets around the baby, he didn't want him to catch cold, and then he rewrapped Harry in the boy's blanket.

"Let's go Harry," Sirius whispered to his godson, as he picked him up. "I've got to get you to Sunnydale." Such a nice sounding name. It would be the perfect place for Harry Potter to grow up, safe, in perfect anonymity. No one could hurt him there, because no one would know that he _was_ there. No need for a Fidelius to hide this secret. Another old saying came to Sirius's mind: "Two people can keep a secret, if one of them's dead." He was the only one who would know about this substitution. "Your new momma's going to be waking up soon, from that spell I put on her. Don't want her to think that her baby's been stolen, now do we? You'll be fine there. You'll live in a nice house. Not a big fancy one, but its nice enough, and I watched your new momma long enough to know that she'll love you. You'll be raised by parents who'll treat you as their very own, because they won't know that you're not. You'll grow up believing that you are Alexander Harris, far away from any of Voldemort's Death Eaters.

"And after I've got you safe into your new home…" Sirius's voice went cold. "…I've got a rat to kill!"

* * *

_For ten years Sirius Black languished in Azkaban prison. Ten long years with only two thoughts to sustain him: the knowledge that Harry was safe, and that the rat who had really killed James and Lily was dead._

_But the knowledge that Harry was safe was a happy thought. The Dementors sapped it away, leaving only his doubts about what could go wrong. Would the substitution be discovered? Would the Muggle family that he'd placed Harry with treat him properly? What if he had some mundane accident or illness: something a mediwizard could set right in moments, but that Muggle medicine was unable to cure?_

_After ten years he started to hear whispers. News came slowly to the prisoners of Azkaban. None came from the Dementors, but sometimes new prisoners brought news about what was happening in the outside world, or Ministry officials would let something slip when they came to interrogate someone. The whispers that Sirius was hearing seemed to confirm his fears. Harry Potter had started classes at Hogwarts. Harry Potter was the youngest Quidditch Seeker in a century. Harry Potter foiled the Dark Lord's plan to use the Philosopher's Stone to restore himself…_

_Somehow, his substitution must have been discovered. A Muggle couldn't do all those things. Even a Muggle-born wizard wouldn't be able to do all those things. Only a child as talented as the son of James and Lily must be would be able to do such things. Who else could have stopped Voldemort, while only eleven years old? Who else could have been such a great Quidditch player, at such a young age? Even if, against all odds, the child he had chosen had turned out to be a Muggle-born wizard, he couldn't have accomplished all that. It had to be the real Harry!_

_Dumbledore. It had to be Dumbledore. He must have somehow discovered the substitution, and gotten Harry back. That was the only explanation that made any sense. Of course, he wouldn't have told anyone: not let it slip that, for a time, Harry Potter had been away from his control. How long could it have been before the substitution had been discovered? Days? Months? Maybe even years. It might even be that Dumbledore had never learned _who _had done it._

_When the time came, a year later, that he discovered that Peter Petigrew was still alive—and worse, at Hogwarts with Harry—Sirius had nearly forgotten what he had tried to do to protect the infant Harry Potter. The Dementors had taken nearly all of it away. When he remembered it at all, it was only his fears of all the ways that it could have gone wrong that came to his mind. In those moments he resolved to never tell anyone what he had done. If he ever encountered Dumbledore again, he'd only talk about it if the old wizard brought the matter up himself. He'd never tell Harry. It was better that Harry never knew that he might have had a life away from those Dursleys…_


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Coming through!"

Xander Harris stepped to the side of the hall to let the two girls carry the heavy table past him. He knew that table was made from solid oak—he'd selected it himself—but the girls were carrying it as effortlessly as they would have if it had been made from balsa wood. "Careful with that!" he called after them. He knew that they could smash it into kindling as easily as they could a balsa wood table too, and heaven help anything that they ran into.

The girls just laughed, and one of them waved as she flipped the table over onto its side and manoeuvred it, one handed, through the door into what was to be a conference room, with less than an inch of clearance to spare on either side.

Xander shook his head, and continued down the hall to the top of the stairs. He looked down with pride. The wide stairway swept down into a circular atrium with a parquet floor. He pulled a cloth from his pocket, and rubbed some fingerprints off the rich wood of the railing. The atrium below him was buzzing with activity. Dawn stood in the centre of it, directing traffic: sending Slayers this way and that, delivering their burdens to their appointed rooms.

He had made this.

Okay, he hadn't personally made all that much of it, but he had supervised every step of the process, from the original architect's drawings, through the excavation for the basement (and sub-basements) to the shingling of the roof. He had been here for the first ceremonial ground breaking and for the last dab of paint, and for most of the steps in between. He had even managed to do some of the carpentry himself. Not as much as he would have liked—there was just too much of it—but enough.

He had to dodge another pair of Slayers carrying a desk up the stairs. These two weren't quite so cheerful. Xander overheard one of them grumbling about how they got stuck with all the heavy stuff. Andrew was following them, carrying a single cardboard box that looked like it was giving him more of a problem than the desk was giving the Slayers.

It had taken them nearly three years to get here, following the destruction of Sunnydale. Most of the first year had been spent running around the world, searching out all the new Slayers. The second was spent getting the Watchers re-established as an effective support organization for them. It was during that time that they decided that they needed to establish a new headquarters, and after spending some time unsuccessfully searching for something that could be adapted for their use, they had decided that the only way to get the sort of facility that they really wanted was to have it custom built from the ground up. Renovating an existing structure to suit their needs would have cost even more.

Even starting from scratch had been a challenge. So many of their requirements conflicted: an ultra-modern facility, that had an old-world grace to it; a place that would be a comfortable home for the people who would live here, and an efficient working environment for the people who would work here; telephone, Internet, and satellite communications systems giving full connectivity with the rest of the world, while at the same time providing them with the best security against outside eavesdroppers or other electronic intrusion; the same on the mystical side: a harmonious environment for performing magic, but fully warded against magical intrusion.

That last item had hit a bit of a snag. Willow had planned to erect the final ward—one which would nullify any magical glamours, seemings, or illusions—a week earlier, until Dawn had asked what effect that might have on her, and the Key. Willow'd had to go back to her magical drawing board, to make sure that her spell wouldn't have any undue (or undo) effect on Dawn. The casting of that spell was now set for midnight tonight.

* * *

Harry Potter stopped in at the little Muggle general store in Ottery St. Catchpole to collect a couple of things that Ginny had told him to get for dinner, and for the litre of Häagen Dazs ice-cream that she hadn't asked for, but that he knew was her favourite. It was so much more convenient for him to shop in Muggle stores where no one knew him as "The Boy Who Destroyed You-Know-Who." Even with him gone for good this time, without any remaining Horcruxes to bring him back, most wizards were still afraid to say Voldemort's name.

Home was close enough that he didn't need to put a freezing spell on the ice-cream. When Ginny had first suggested that they look for a place near her family, Harry had been a little leery, but when you got right down to it, one mile or a hundred miles didn't make that much difference to in-laws who could apparate. (Not that Harry had any objections to his in-laws. He had been a virtual adopted Weasley long before he married Ginny, and he adored the lot of them. Even Percy was tolerable, these days. They could get to be a little overwhelming at times, though.)

A couple of people waved friendly greetings as he walked through the village towards the cottage that he and Ginny lived in. Harry cheerfully returned the waves. To these people he was just Mr. Potter, the nice young man with a new bride and a child on the way, who lived in an out of the way cottage on the outskirts of the village, and Harry didn't have to worry about any ulterior motives. Ottery St. Catchpole had no shortage of witches and wizards, of course—in addition to the expanding Weasley clan, there were the Lovegoods, and the Diggorys, and the Fawcetts—and sometimes he'd encounter one or two on his walk home, but they were all in-laws, old friends, or at least acquaintances, and not the sort who would pretend to be nice, or pester him, just because he was famous. They all respected his desire to get on with his life, without any more complications.

There were, of course, always complications. Harry had realized his schoolboy ambition and become an Auror, but things hadn't worked out the way he'd hoped. He was too famous. He couldn't just do the job, no matter how much he wanted to. Any time he showed up among wizards, any hope of being treated like a professional pretty much went out the floo. While other Aurors who had graduated with him got to go out in the field, hunting down the few Death Eaters that were still at large, Harry found himself being little more than a glorified office boy. It had only taken a few months of that for him to request a transfer over into Muggle Affairs. His Auror training came in useful there, he had lots of experience dealing with troublesome Muggles (Who'd have thought that any good would have come from his life with the Dursleys?) and he could deal with Muggles without having to worry about anyone recognizing him. The director of the expanded Muggle Affairs department was also his father in-law, but Arthur Weasley was a couple of links removed in his chain of command, so that didn't cause him too many embarrassments.

He opened the gate to pass through the high hedge that hid his home from casual observers, and walked up the path to the single storey cottage. It wasn't a large house, but it was just right for him, Ginny, and their soon to be arriving daughter or son. He imagined that the Burrow had looked very much like this, once upon a time, before all the additions that had been made to accommodate the seven Weasley children. He had hopes that this house would grow in a similar fashion (though, maybe not quite so much.)

"Gin! I'm home!" he called as he opened the front door. Ginny came to greet him with a kiss, that Harry enthusiastically returned, and he rubbed her swollen belly. "How's junior today?"

"Alive and kicking," said Ginny. She took the grocery bag from him. "You get everything?"

"Yep, and a little something extra."

Ginny looked in the bag. "Ooh! Mocha Almond Fudge! You are the best husband ever!"

Harry grinned at her. "I like to try. So why did I have to get all that?"

"I asked Ron and Hermione to come over for dinner."

"Great! I haven't seen Ron all week!" Harry followed Ginny toward the kitchen. "How long till they get here?"

Ginny transferred the ice-cream from the bag to the freezer, and handed the bag back to him. "Long enough for you to get the salad done. I already asked Dobby to start the roast."

Harry had been unable to rid himself of the house-elf. (Though "rid" wasn't really the right word for it.) Dobby had just moved in with him and Ginny, and refused to move out. It seemed that Harry had acquired an entourage of house-elves over the years. Kreacher was still the only one that he actually owned (much to Hermione's continuing disgust) but Dobby always seemed to show up wherever he went, and where Dobby went, Winky seemed sure to follow.

Dobby wasn't an unwelcome occupant in their home. He was an excellent cook, and took care of most of the housework too. Harry knew that he'd become even more indispensable as the birth of their child approached, and after.

Winky had accepted employment with the Weasleys. Molly had objected at first, but not too strenuously. Even though none of her children lived at home any longer, they were all frequent visitors, along with their spouses, children, friends and what-not. Last Christmas at the Burrow had been a madhouse. Bill and Fleur and their two children, Charley and his girlfriend, Fred and George and their girlfriends, Percy, Ron and Hermione, and Harry and Ginny. Along with drop ins from Remus and Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minerva McGonagall, and other surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix. More than enough work to keep a couple of house-elves busy (for Dobby had come along too.)

* * *

Dawn leaned back against Xander, in a love seat in one of the lounges of their new Headquarters. Empty pizza boxes were scattered around the room, and all the other sofas and chairs were occupied by Slayers and their friends. There was a buzz of happy conversations in the air. Andrew was crawling around on the floor behind a cabinet full of electronics, working to get the 50 inch plasma TV hooked up. Giles was trying to look dignified, while helping him run wires. So far he had managed to have Andrew do all the crawling.

Dawn had the last slice of pizza in her hand. It had taken some careful manoeuvring to keep it for herself, (part of which had been to include a large anchovy and pineapple pizza in the order: none of the Slayers cared much for that combination, but they all became much less selective when they got hungry.)

"You going to eat all of that yourself?" asked Xander.

Dawn took a bite out of the slice. "I can share." She held the slice up for him to take a bite of his own from.

"Umm…delicious." Xander licked his lips.

Xander having the same taste in pizza was just one of the things that Dawn loved about him. Dawn had loved Xander for as long as she had known him…okay the first four years of schoolgirl crush were invented by the monks, but after that, the feeling hadn't gone away. It had transmuted into friendship over the next few years in Sunnydale.

After Sunnydale had disappeared, they had gone their separate ways for a time: Xander to Africa to search that continent for new Slayers, and Dawn to Rome to finish her highschool education while Buffy searched Europe for Slayers. During that time Dawn had missed Xander more than any of her other friends. She had looked forward to his emails and phone calls even more than she had the ones from Willow or Giles.

Dawn had been accepted into Cambridge after her year in Rome, and Xander had come back from Africa to supervise the construction of the the new Headquarters. The location that had been selected was only a few miles from the university, overlooking the River Cam near the village of Waterbeach, so it had made sense for them to share a flat.

For the first year that's all they'd done. Dawn had dated a few guys from her classmates in Cambridge, but they had always measured up short (though not necessarily in the physical department.) Her first serious boyfriend had been a guy she'd met at school in Rome. Her relationship with Antonio had been passionate, and exciting, and doomed. Buffy had tried to warn her, but she hadn't listened. Tony had thought that he was ready to take on whatever the world might have to throw his way, but his first real glimpse of the things that inhabited the night, that were part of Dawn's day to day existence, had sent him running.

Dawn had rebounded, after she started at Cambridge, with a boy from one of the old Watcher families. He'd already known about the things that went bump in the night, but it quickly became clear to Dawn that he was mostly interested in her because she was Buffy's sister, and not for herself. A few more guys had come and gone. Some for one or two dates, a couple that had lasted for a few months, but none of them for any more than that. Some had remained friends, but there were none she had developed any deep feelings for.

Xander had been there for her after each failed relationship. He'd provided an ear she could spew her venom into. He had provided a shoulder she could cry on.

It wasn't just one way. Xander'd had his share or relationship woes after Sunnydale. Anya's death had hit him hard. Harder than he let most of his friends know. He had tried to shrug it off, start over with a new girl, but it hadn't worked. Every new relationship he'd tried had come to naught.

After a year sharing the flat, and sharing each other's heartache, they had both realized that they were more than just friends to each other. Even then they had moved slowly, each of them more than a little afraid that changing their relationship from friendship, to something more, might end badly. And if that happened, who would they have to console each other?

Xander had also been more than a little afraid of Buffy. How would she react if she thought that he was taking advantage of her little sister? Those fears hadn't been entirely unfounded. Buffy still had a tendency to revert to treating Dawn like she was fourteen. It had not gone well when she first learned that he and Dawn were starting to get closer together. Buffy thought that he was too old for her little sister. (Something that Dawn felt was good for a laugh, considering Buffy's track record. Heck, even Riley had been six years older than her. She had pointed out to Buffy that she and Xander were the same ages that Buffy and Riley had been when they'd started their relationship. "And look how well _that_ turned out!" Buffy had shot back at her.) Buffy had come around eventually, as had their other friends, though Willow had threatened them both with bludgeoning by shovel if they screwed this up.

Screwing it up was something that seemed less and less likely as time progressed, and now, if Buffy objected at all, it was to their habit of making public displays of affection more than anything else, and Dawn thought that a lot of the reason for that was that Buffy wasn't getting any.

So now they sat snuggled together in the new Headquarters of the International Council of Slayers and Watchers that Xander had built, taking alternating bites from the last slice of anchovy and pineapple pizza, and being somewhat oblivious to the other people around them.

When the pizza was gone, and they licked the last bits of sauce from each others' lips, the only reaction from Buffy was an outburst of "Oh, get a room!"

Dawn jumped up off Xander's lap, and pulled him to his feet. "Great idea!" She grinned at him. "We've got a bed to christen."

"Don't forget that you have to be in the atrium by midnight!" Willow called over the cat-calls and whistles from the Slayers.

"We won't!" Dawn shot back over her shoulder as she dragged Xander out the door.

* * *

"So then Ernie is left holding the bag of loot, while Mundungus disappeared using a Portkey," said Ron.

Harry laughed. "So how did you catch him?"

"While Ernie was distracting Mundungus, I managed to switch his Portkey. It dumped him straight into a holding cell, so not only did we recover all the swag he'd nicked, but we caught him fair and square." Ron settled back in his chair beside the fire in Harry and Ginny's sitting room, and took a sip from his glass of firewhisky.

"I almost wish he'd gotten away with it," said Harry. "I'd just as soon see Mundungus making a profit from selling off stuff he looted from a Death Eater's house as have the Ministry auction it off."

"Yeah, I think the judge pretty much agrees with you. He only gave him three months. With 'good behaviour' he'll be back in business by July. I told my boss that we should just hire him. He's better at finding Death Eater stashes than anyone the Ministry has on the payroll."

"I don't think that he reported everything he learned to the Order, back during the War," said Hermione. "He made up his own private list of places to go back to, once things were over."

"We should just pay him a commission for everything he turns over to us," said Ron.

"Mundungus won't want to work for the Ministry," said Harry. "That'd take all the fun out of it. It would be too much like actually having a job."

"There is that," said Ron.

"How are you going to cover things up for the Muggles?" asked Ginny. "I mean, really, a high speed broom chase over downtown London, in broad daylight?"

"I've already take care of it," said Hermione. "I put some fuzzy pictures of them on half a dozen UFO web sites, and in The Sun. Most Muggles are now thoroughly convinced that they're a hoax, and no one takes the rest of them seriously. They stayed high enough that most of the people who saw anything, thought that they were just large birds."

Ron yawned. "Oh, sorry, but us hard working Hit Wizards have to get up early in the mornings." He knocked back the remains of his drink, and sighed. "Good stuff. Thanks for having us, but I think it's time to be on our way." He and Hermione exchanged a look that said that they weren't really thinking about going to bed…at least not to sleep, anyway.

"Yes!" said Hermione. "We should be going. I'll see you in the office in the morning, Harry. Goodnight, Ginny. Thanks for dinner. Tell Dobby it was delicious."

Harry and Ginny saw Ron and Hermione out the door, and waved goodbye before the couple apparated away to their own home. Harry wrapped his arms around Ginny after they had gone. "I think it's time for us to go to bed too. Come on, and I'll give you a foot rub."

"Just my feet?" asked Ginny.

"That's where I'm planning to start," said Harry, "not where I plan to finish." He had his wand in his hand and murmured a quick feather-light charm before he scooped her up, and carried her off to their bedroom.

* * *

Xander and Dawn arrived in the crowded atrium with a whole thirty seconds to spare, and not looking _too_ mussed. "So, we miss anything?" he asked breathlessly.

Willow looked up from the centre of the pentagram she was sitting in, that was a permanent part of the inlay pattern of the floor. "Nope, you're just in time." The only light in the room was coming from the candles that surrounded her, and moonlight shining through the overhead skylight.

Most of the Slayers, and other people, were standing around the periphery of the atrium, leaving the centre open. Buffy, Giles, and Kennedy were standing at three apexes of the pentagram's star. Willow pointed to the two vacant ones. "I need you and Dawn to stand there."

They quickly took their positions. Willow lit an incense stick from the candle in front of her. "Blind Cadria, lift the veil of illusion from those who enter this place…"

The spell went on for quite a while, in at least three different languages that Xander couldn't understand, as Willow worked her magic. It was a fairly complicated matter to create a space in which only a few rather specific sorts of illusions were possible. He'd been around Willow and magic long enough to understand a bit of the Latin, and to recognize another of the languages as Greek, and a couple of random words from some of the other languages that she used, but he had given up on ever understanding how she did just about any of the things that she did. When it came to magic, he just stood where she told him to stand, and repeated the words that she told him to say. Fortunately this spell was nearly all Willow, with the people standing around the edge of the pentagram mostly there for moral support.

Willow picked up the large candle in front of her. "As I extinguish this flame, let illusions fade. So mote it be!" She blew out the candle.

Xander felt a bit dizzy. The room seemed shift around him. His vision blurred. He felt a stab of pain in the socket of his artificial eye. "Ow!" He leaned over, holding his hand to his eye. He heard the sound of weapons being drawn.

"_Who are you?_" demanded Dawn. Xander didn't think that he could recall ever hearing her sound so angry.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Xander looked up. His prosthetic eye was in his hand and he blinked, with _two_ eyes. One of them—the eye he'd lost three years ago—felt like it had just been poked by a finger, but it was real, and he could see with it. He couldn't see very well with it, but he could see. He looked around the atrium, trying to focus, but everything was blurry. He could see that everyone in the room had turned toward him. He saw that there were several weapons pointed in his direction: swords, axes and crossbows. Everyone looked angry, but none more than Dawn.

"What's going on?" he asked, but it wasn't his voice that he heard.

Buffy came across the pentagram at him. She grabbed him by his shirt, which seemed bigger than it had been moments before, and shoved him up against a wall. "What have you done with Xander?"

"_I'm_ Xander! I haven't done anything with him—me." Xander looked around. "Will, tell Buffy I'm me!"

"Funny," said Willow, without sounding the least bit amused. "You don't _look_ like Xander, and I've known him for twenty years. You didn't count on me doing that spell to remove illusions, did you? How long have you been impersonating him?"

Xander felt a sinking sensation. What Dawn, Buffy and Willow had said, the way everyone was looking at him, the way he felt: Willow's spell had done something to the way he looked. He could imagine what they must be thinking. "Willow! I've known about that spell for years! It was part of the original planning for the new building! We were going to do it last week, but you had to do some last minute tweaking because of…you know. If I was someone impersonating me, I would have cleared out. I mean really, if I was using magic to impersonate me, staying, knowing that you were doing what you were doing: that's something so stupid that only I would do it!"

Willow started to look a little uncertain. "There is something very Xanderish about that skewed sort of logic…"

"I know! I have to tell you stuff that only I would know, like back when Toth split me in two, and I thought that there was a demon robot or something impersonating me, and I told you the story about the fire engine, and I did the Snoopy Dance…" Xander looked back at Buffy. "Uh…if you let me go, I can do the Snoopy Dance."

"I'm not letting you go." Buffy still wasn't looking like she believed anything he was saying.

"Okay…uh…the first thing I ever said to you was 'Can I have you?' I _meant_ to say '_help_ you' but it just came out wrong. It was right outside Principal Flutie's office—back before the other guys in the hyena pack ate him—and you'd spilled your purse on the floor. I helped you pick everything up, and got left holding a stake, which I had absolutely no idea why you were carrying around in your purse. I thought that maybe you were making a tiny fence."

Buffy's grip on him relaxed a bit. "Xander?"

"Yeah Buff, it's me."

"Tell me something only _I_ know," demanded Dawn.

"Well, uh, just before we came back down here, we—"

"Something that _won't_ make me think that I was just raped by an impostor."

Whatever relaxing Buffy might have been doing vanished when Dawn said that.

"Oh…right…uh…" Xander thought for a bit. Whatever he said next had to be good. "You're not special, Dawn. You're _extraordinary!_ And you can be really nasty with a taser. Uh…there are a few, uh, key things I could tell you, but there are too many people around that you don't want to know about that stuff."

* * *

Ginny couldn't sleep through the night. The pressure from the child within on her bladder always sent her to the bathroom at least once. She got out of bed, being careful not to wake Harry. She made her way to the bathroom to relieve herself, washed her hands and her face, and started back toward their bed.

She stopped. That! Wasn't! Harry! Some stranger was sleeping in their bed where he was supposed to be! She moved silently to where her dressing gown was draped over a chair, picked it up, and wrapped it around herself. She reached out her hand and summoned her wand to it off the beside table. She silently _Accioed_ Harry's wand off the other table. She aimed her wand at the sleeping figure, and with a loud _bang_ the man in their bed was securely wrapped in ropes.

The stranger in their bed was startled awake. "Huh, what's going on?" he asked.

"Who are you?" demanded Ginny. "What have you done with Harry?"

He looked puzzled. "Ginny? What's wrong?" She was surprised to see that he seemed to be missing his left eye.

"_Who are you?_"

"Gin, it's me. Harry."

"You're not Harry. I know what Harry looks like, and you're not him! _Where is he?_"

"What are you talking about?" He struggled against the ropes binding him. "What's happened to my voice? I don't sound right."

Ginny flicked her wand, and the mirror from her dresser flew across the room, and settled in front of the stranger in their bed. "Does that look like Harry to you? What happened, forget to take your Polyjuice?"

"Merlin! What's happened to me?" The man blinked a few times, and looked puzzled. "_What happened to my eye?_ And how come I'm not blurry? I'm not wearing my glasses." He looked up at her. "Gin, I swear, I don't know what's going on, but I'm me. I'm Harry."

"Oh yeah? Tell me something that only Harry knows."

"Er… we first met when you were ten, and you'd come with your mom to see your brothers off at the station. She had to tell me how to get onto platform nine and three quarters."

"That was in that stupid 'unauthorized autobiography' that Rita Skeeter wrote," said Ginny. "Though how she thought she could get away with calling it an 'autobiography' when _she_ wrote it is beyond me. And how can you have an 'unauthorized' autobiography in the first place?"

"She's an idiot," said the man in their bed. "And she made up all that rot about how it was 'love at first sight.' I barely even noticed you." He shrugged. "Sorry."

"When did you notice me?"

"Sixth year," said the man. "Well, you were a friend long before that, but it was in sixth year that I started thinking of you as a girl. And we first kissed right after the last Quidditch game of the season—you beat Ravenclaw for the cup…and you sent me that singing telegram in second year, you never confessed _that_ to anyone but me; and the baby is going to be named James Sirius if its a boy, and Lily Luna if it's a girl, and yes we both think that the alliteration is a bit silly, but we still want to honour both of them; and the backs of your knees are very ticklish; and you've got a lovely little heart shaped birthmark on the inside of your left thigh, and I always kiss it and call you 'my dear heart' before I—"

"Okay, you're Harry." Ginny flicked her wand, releasing the ropes that were binding him. "So, what happened?"

"I don't know." Harry looked at his hands, turning them over and examining them closely. "I don't think it could have been Polyjuice. I would have noticed that. It tastes horrid, and the transformation hurts like hell. No way I'd have slept through it." He started to feel around his face.

"You haven't received any 'gifts' from Fred or George lately, have you?" asked Ginny.

Harry shook his head. "Not that I know of…I suppose that they might have slipped me something without my noticing it, but I haven't seen them for a couple of weeks. Have they told you that they were developing anything that might do this?"

It was Ginny's turn to shake her head. "Nope, and they're supposed to keep me informed about their new product developments." The idea that one of her brothers might have slipped something past her made her a little cross. _Nothing_ was supposed to leave their development lab that she hadn't approved.

Ginny had joined _Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes_ shortly after she had left Hogwarts. A couple of close calls with products that weren't _quite_ ready for public consumption, and some organizational problems that came about because their company had grown too quickly in the early years had made her brothers realize that they needed someone more sensible than they were to help them run the business side of the business. (Besides, foisting the humdrum management concerns off on Ginny gave them more time for the fun part: developing new pranks.)

One of first things Ginny had done was institute some new rules about how products were tested. One of them was that _nothing_ left their lab that she hadn't approved. If they'd done this to Harry…

Harry seemed to read her mind. "Hey, we've got no reason to believe that they're behind this."

"You're right, of course," said Ginny, "but if I find out that they are, I'll hex them into next year!" She sighed. "But what do we do now?"

"I think we need someone smarter than us to figure this out," said Harry. "Why don't you call Hermione?"

* * *

Xander had gotten a provisional agreement that he might really be himself out of Dawn, Buffy, Willow and Giles. It had taken a confession about the fabulous "Lady's Night" club to finish bringing Buffy around, and a story about Spike and Giles arguing over whether they'd watch Oprah, or Sally Jesse Raphael that he'd walked in on, during the time that Spike had been living in Giles' home, to convince him.

They still weren't completely convinced, but it was enough that Buffy had let go of him, and they'd moved into one of the new conference rooms where there were chairs available for people to sit down in. Two of the Slayers weren't sitting. They were standing behind him, ready to pounce if he made one wrong move.

His eye was feeling better now, but he kept blinking, hoping that would improve his vision. He didn't like not being able to see clearly.

"I don't get it," said Buffy. "Willow's spell was supposed to remove illusions. Why would it change the way Xander looks?"

"The only thing that makes even any sense would be if this is the way that Xander is really supposed to look," said Giles. "That what we believed to be his normal appearance was an illusion all along."

"But that doesn't make any sense either!" said Willow. "I've known Xander since we were four! And he's always had brown eyes, and brown hair. Now his eyes are green, and he's got both of them, and his hair is nearly black, and he's got that scar on his forehead. What's that from anyway?"

"Don't ask me," said Xander. "I still haven't seen it." He rubbed his hand against his forehead, feeling the bump there. "We really need to put some mirrors in this place. That's something we overlooked in the design: lots of mirrors, to make spotting vamps easier."

"Yes," said Giles. "Let's all discuss the changes we want to make in our new headquarters. That is a much more urgent matter than what has happened to you."

"Whatever happened, either we fix it soon, or I'm gonna need glasses." Xander held up his hands, making 'O's with his fingers over his eyes and grinned at Dawn. "What do you think?"

Dawn shifted uncomfortably. "I think that we fix this soon."

"Willow, do you remember when Faith switched bodies with me?" asked Buffy.

"How could I forget?"

"You and Tara did that Astral Projection thing, to see what was really going on. Do you think you could do it again?"

"Nether Realm. It's entirely different. Astral Projection—" Willow saw the looks that everyone was giving her. "The difference isn't really important now. I did that to find out where your soul had gone. It won't show anything about what's happened to Xander's physical body."

"But it will confirm that it's really Xander's soul inhabiting this body, won't it?" asked Buffy.

"Oh yeah. That it'll do."

"Do you need anything?"

"Just a little privacy," said Willow. "Kennedy and I can do it in our room."

* * *

"_Giiiin!_" Harry called plaintively from their bedroom. The voice wasn't his, but there was something about the way he said that, that was unmistakably Harry.

Ginny had just finished making her firecall to Hermione. "What?" she called back.

"My clothes don't fit!" said Harry.

Ginny went to the door to their bedroom. She looked at…Harry looking forlornly back at her, in a shirt that was too small for him. She tried to ignore the missing eye. "What's the problem?"

Harry tried to pull the shirt closed across his chest. "It doesn't fit!"

"So do a stretching charm on it!" said Ginny. "That's second year stuff!"

"I _tried_!" said Harry. "It didn't work. I think there's something wrong with my wand." He picked it up. "It doesn't feel right, and look!" He swished and flicked. "_Wingardium Leviosa!_"

Nothing happened.

"_That_'s first year stuff! And I can't make it happen!" said Harry. "There must be something wrong with it."

"Give me that!" Ginny took the wand from Harry. She could feel its power in her hand, almost as familiar as her own. She pointed it at the potted plant on the table under their bedroom window. "_Engorgio._"

The plant swelled, its leaves growing to the size of garden spades, and its flowers to dinner plates.

"It works for me," said Ginny.

"_Ginny?_ _Harry?_" called Hermione and Ron from the living room.

"Be there in a second!" called Ginny. She quickly did some stretching spells on Harry's clothes. "Get dressed," she told him. "We'll figure this out."

* * *

Xander spent some of the time waiting for Willow and Kennedy to get back looking at his hands. He found that if he held them up about six inches from his face, he could focus on them just fine. "You know that old saying, about knowing something 'like the back of my hand'?" he asked.

"Yeah?" asked Dawn.

"These don't look right to me, but for the life of my, I can't really tell you what's wrong with them. I can't remember what they're _supposed_ to look like."

"Really?"

"Really. I mean, there are a couple of things." Xander pointed to a scar on the back of his right hand. "I know that I didn't have a scar like that one. He looked closer at it. "'I must not tell lies.' Why would anyone have that carved into their hand? And I can remember a couple other scars that I _should_ have, that are gone, but I can't tell you what the arrangement of freckles should be, or the wrinkles. I'm pretty sure that they've changed, but I can't tell you what they _should_ be."

Willow and Kennedy arrived back in the conference room. "He's Xander, but…"

"But what?" asked Buffy.

"From the Nether Realm, I could see his soul," said Willow. "He really is Xander, but there's something else…"

"He's possessed?" asked Buffy. "Something possessed him to make him look like this?"

"It's not a possession!" said Willow. "I don't really know what it is. It's like he's got some new sort of power."

"Oh, great." said Xander. "I've got this new power that makes me not look like me. I couldn't get a useful power. Oh no, not me."

"It's not that." Willow tipped her head as she looked at him. "Everything that makes you…you is still there, but it's like something has been added. Now that I know what to look for, I can see it in your aura."

"Are you _sure_?" asked Dawn.

"Yes, Dawnie. I'm sure," said Willow. "He really is Xander, on the inside. It's only his outsides that have changed."

* * *

Harry was getting tired of playing "twenty questions." Why couldn't anyone just believe that he was him? Okay, they'd all had experiences with people pretending to be someone they weren't. Mad Eye Moody in fourth year sprang immediately to mind—especially considering his sudden lack of one—but none of them had known the original. Shouldn't Ron and Hermione just be able to look at him, and know the truth?

They seemed to have accepted a guarded "This is really Harry," for now. Hermione had no idea how such a thing could be possible without using Polyjuice, and no one had any explanation for why he couldn't use his wand anymore, or anyone else's for that matter. Hermione had insisted that they perform that experiment. Harry had tried to do simple spells with her wand, and Ron's, and Ginny's and nothing had happened with any of them. It was like he had been suddenly turned into a Squib, along with the change in his appearance.

Hermione had tried _Metamorphosis Deleo_ and _Finite Incantatem_ spells on Harry, to try to undo whatever had happened to him, with no result. "I'd like to talk to the professors at Hogwarts about this. Maybe Headmistress McGonagall, or Professor Flitwick has seen something like it before."

"I think you better tell everyone in the office that I won't be in to work tomorrow," Harry told her.

"Okay," said Hermione, "but how long can we keep that up? If we can't fix this—"

"We have to fix this!" said Harry. "I can't go the rest of my life not looking like me!"

"You don't look that bad," said Hermione. "I mean, there are a lot of worse ways you could look."

"On the bright side, you don't have to worry about being recognized, now," said Ron. "You can go out, without having to worry about being mobbed."

* * *

Dawn came out of their room's attached bathroom, wearing one of Xander's flannel shirts. She looked nervously around the room that she shared with him. She was _sure_ that he was really him, both from her own experience, and what Willow said about him, but it still felt a little weird to be here with a guy that she didn't really recognize.

"Why don't you spend the night with Buffy?" asked Xander.

"No!" said Dawn. "I mean…Okay, it's weird with you not looking like you, but I believe that it's you so there's no reason I shouldn't be here, is there?"

"Dawn, if this is making you feel weird…I want you to be someplace you're comfortable," said Xander.

"If I feel weird…it must feel a thousand times weirder for you," said Dawn.

"But I _know_ that I'm still me," said Xander. "Somewhere, inside, you still have doubts."

"Maybe a little," said Dawn. "But…if you're you…this has to be horrible for you…and if I desert you…it has to make it worse…and I can't do that to you."

Xander took her into his arms. "I love you, Dawn."

"And I love…Xander. I'm sorry." Dawn pushed him away. "Oh god…I…"

"I understand," said Xander.

"Xander, I…" Dawn closed her eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath. "I want to believe that you're you. I really do."

"Dawn. It's okay. Why don't you go sleep in Buffy's room?"

"No!" said Dawn. "I'm staying here. You need me."

"Dawn…"

Dawn wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him. "You're Xander. I believe that. I just have to get used to this new shape of yours."

* * *

Harry gathered up sheets and blankets to move to the sofa in their living room that Ginny had transfigured into a bed.

"I'm sorry Harry," said Ginny, "But it just doesn't feel right."

"It's okay," said Harry. "In a way it's good to know that you don't feel right sleeping with a guy who doesn't look like me."

"Harry!" Ginny drew her wand and pointed it at him. "One more word, and I won't be sleeping with a guy who looks like a frog!"

Harry made a zipping gesture across his lips, and grinned at her.

Ginny grinned back, and gave him a quick kiss. "See you in the morning." She went back into their bedroom.

"Goodnight Ginny!" Harry called to her.

"Goodnight Harry!" Ginny called back.

Harry went to work, stretching the sheets and blankets over the bed. He really did understand Ginny's position. He tried to put himself in her shoes. Would he be able to sleep with someone who looked like a stranger, but claimed to be his wife?


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Xander walked down Charing Cross Road, loaded down with shopping bags, and with Dawn beside him. He looked around at a world that was back in focus for the first time in several days. His new glasses felt a little weird on his nose and ears, and he was jumpy about anything moving too close to his face—afraid that it might knock the glasses away—but it was nice to be able to read the street signs for himself, and to have depth perception again.

He'd talked to Willow about her casting another spell—one to make him look like his old self—but she hadn't liked the idea. For one thing, it would have required making changes in the Council's wards, unless he wanted to banish himself from the building, and every exception that she built into those wards weakened their overall protection. Xander had to agree that the protections placed on the building were more important than his personal appearance.

His appearance was improving. He and Dawn had gone shopping for a new wardrobe, between when he'd had his eyes tested and when his new glasses had been ready. Xander liked his clothes a little loose, but after the change, he'd felt like he was wearing a tent in any of his old shirts, and he'd worn a couple of pairs of his work socks to keep his shoes from falling off his feet. His pants hadn't been too bad. He'd had to take in his belt a couple of notches, but the legs were still the right length. He was just as tall as he'd ever been, but now he was a lot slimmer. Now he was fully decked out in new clothes, that fit the way he liked them to fit. Dawn was a good shopping partner. She liked his taste in clothes, and didn't try to force him into something more fashionable, the way her sister did the few times he'd gone shopping with her, but she did have a better eye for colour than he did so she made sure that everything he bought matched fairly well.

Now he was enjoying a pleasant walk with his girlfriend, back to their hotel, on a warm spring day. Xander noticed the appreciative looks that Dawn got from many of the guys on the street, and felt a little smug that some of the girls were giving him similar looks. There was one person, though, who gave them a look that bothered him. He looked at them as if he recognized them, before he ducked into the entrance to a pub. It was a strange looking place. The sign hanging over the door had a picture of a witch stirring a cauldron. It was the sort of image that would make smoke come out of Willow's ears, if she saw it. The man came out again about a half minute later, dragging another man who was carrying what looked like an antique camera, and pointed at them. The man with the camera took their picture.

If the guy had just been on the street, and taken a picture, Xander wouldn't have thought twice about it, but there was something strange about the two men. It seemed that they had very deliberately taken the picture of him, or Dawn, and he wanted to know why. He called out, "Hey!" and started to move more quickly down the street toward them.

The men turned and ran away. They ducked into an alley between a couple of buildings. Xander and Dawn ran after them, but when they got to the alley, it was empty.

"Where'd they go?" asked Dawn.

"I don't know." Xander handed off his shopping bags to Dawn, and checked a dumpster. He quickly turned away from the smell of the rotting restaurant scraps that it contained. He tried the doors entering into the alley, but found that they were locked. The other end of the alley was blocked by a tall fence. A Slayer might have gotten over it that quickly, but Xander doubted if any other people could have. The men being out in daylight eliminated the possibility that they'd been vampires, but he supposed that they might have been some other sort of demon that was passing as human.

"Okay, this is weird," said Dawn. "Did you recognize either of them?"

"No, did you?"

"Uh-uh. So, why'd they want our picture?"

"I have no idea…other than pretty much any guy would like to have a picture of you."

"They seemed to be looking at you, more than me," said Dawn.

"If you say so." Xander took one last look around the alley, without seeing anything that could explain how the men had vanished. He checked his watch. "Damn! We're supposed to be meeting Willow in twenty minutes. We better hurry up, if we don't want to be late."

* * *

Harry heard the _crack_ of someone apparating into his front garden. There were only a few people who could do that without setting off alarms, and even they usually used the gazebo in the village green, rather than popping directly onto his property. It was generally considered impolite to apparate too close to your destination when you were dropping in to visit someone.

He was already half way to the door when there was an urgent pounding on it. Dobby still beat him to it. The house-elf had gotten rather over-protective of Harry in the last few days, once it became clear to everyone that Harry's sudden inability to do magic seemed to be permanent, along with his change in appearance. Harry could tell from his posture that Dobby was all set to send whoever had come calling on their way again when he opened the door.

Ron didn't give him the chance. He just barged right past the house-elf, waving a copy of _The Daily Prophet_ in the air. "Have you seen this?"

"Uh…no," said Harry. "I stopped subscribing years ago. _The Quibbler_ is a more reliable source of news."

"I'll say." Ron looked around. "Is Ginny here?"

"No, she had to go to some meeting with _Zonko's_, about the new Halloween line of Wheezes. They're saying that they want to drop the margin, or something like that."

"Halloween?" asked Ron. "It's only May."

"She wanted to get this sorted out before she starts her maternity leave," said Harry, "and they need to get the orders finalized early, so that they can get production ramped up to deliver on time. In July, it'll be the Christmas line that they're worrying about. Why do you want to see her?"

"I was hoping to head her off before she sees this for herself." Ron waved the newspaper again. "She's going to go spare when she finds out."

"Finds out what?"

"Oh." Ron handed him the paper. Harry unfolded it, and saw the headline: "Harry Potter Seen in London. (Who's the Girl?)" Under it was a picture of someone who certainly _looked_ like Harry—the way he was supposed to look—walking with a pretty, dark haired girl on his arm. Neither of them looked happy to be having their pictures taken. As he watched, it seemed that the photographer started to run away from them, and the couple chased after him.

"When was this taken?" asked Harry.

"According to the story, it was yesterday afternoon," said Ron. "I asked a couple of Forensic Wizards to have a look to confirm that." He pointed to a newspaper box that 'Harry' ran past. "That's yesterday's copy of the _Times_ there. The shadow angles confirm that it was about 3:15 in the afternoon, and that…" He pointed to a storefront in the picture. "…is the bookshop next to the Leaky Cauldron."

Harry started to read the article in the paper. Rita Skeeter's by-line at the top of it did not bode well for its overall accuracy. By the time he finished the first paragraph, he was wanting to hex her ears off. By the time he reached the end of the article, he was thinking about practising a couple of the Unforgivable Curses on her. Perhaps it was a good thing that he didn't seem to be able to do any magic, at the moment. "How can she write this crap?" he asked. "I mean really! 'Secret tryst with an unidentified Muggle!' 'Abandoning his poor pregnant wife!' Like I'd ever do anything like either of those things!"

"Yeah, by the time Ginny was done with you, there wouldn't be enough left for me to stomp into the dirt," said Ron.

"Wait," said Harry. "You had the Forensic Wizards look at this?"

"At first it was to prove it was a fake," said Ron, "but it seems to be genuine."

"I was at Hogwarts all day yesterday!" said Harry. "With Ginny!" They had flooed up to their old school to consult with Professors McGonagall and Flitwick about his problem, and to have Madam Pomfrey examine his missing eye, to see if there was anything she could do about it.

"I know," said Ron. "Hence the me not stomping you into the dirt part of this conversation. It looks like you're not only not looking like yourself these days, but now there's someone else out there who _is_ looking a lot like you."

The door slammed open. "I'm gonna kill that bitch!" snarled Ginny.

"Ah…you've seen the _Prophet_ then," said Ron.

"How can she think she can get away with this?" asked Ginny. "It's one thing to twist the truth around like she usually does, but _this_! This is a new low for her, faking pictures and printing lies like that!"

"Ron was just telling me that the picture seems to be real," said Harry.

"What?" asked Ginny. "It can't be! You were with me all day yesterday, and you…well…you don't look like that anymore."

"Never the less, it seems that someone who looks a lot like Harry, really was walking on Charing Cross Road with a Muggle girl yesterday afternoon," said Ron.

Ginny took the paper away from Harry, and looked at the picture. "Physically, it looks like you, but the clothes and glasses are wrong."

"I know," said Ron. "I don't think I've ever seen you in plaid flannel."

"And that shirt…well…" Ginny hesitated for a moment.

"What?" asked Harry.

"It doesn't fit," said Ginny.

"It's not that bad."

"Harry, ever since you were seventeen, and stopped wearing your cousin's hand-me-downs, I've never seen you go out in public in a shirt that didn't fit you perfectly," said Ginny.

"I don't do that!" said Harry. "I've never cared that much about what I look like!"

"You're right, you don't worry about whether or not what you're wearing is in style, or if the colours clash, or anything like that, but everything that you _do_ wear, fits." Ginny pointed to the picture again. "That shirt is just a little bit too big. Not enough to be a bother, but if you'd been given that shirt, you'd have shrunk it about half a size before you went out in it."

Harry took another look at the picture. "Really?" He supposed that the shirt did look a little big on the guy, but wasn't that the way that sort of shirt was supposed to look?

"Yes, really," said Ron.

"So, is this guy looking so much like me just a coincidence, or do you think it's got something to do with why I'm looking the way I do?"

"He's even got your scar. That's taking coincidence too far," said Ron.

"But why would anyone want to look like me?"

"You're famous. Maybe he did it to get the chicks. That's one good looking girl."

"I'll tell Hermione on you, if you're not careful," said Ginny.

"She probably has no personality," said Ron earnestly. "Shallow. Only attracted to him for his fame, and money."

"The paper thinks she's a Muggle," said Harry. "I'm only famous among wizards. Is she really a Muggle?"

"They seem to have gotten that right," said Ron. "She isn't a British witch, and we have no immigration record of anyone who looks like her coming into the country. She is most likely a Muggle."

"So, what were they doing outside the Leaky Cauldron the other day?"

"From the bags he's carrying, I'd guess shopping," said Ginny.

* * *

Harry might have transferred out of the Auror department, but he still had the training, and he'd kept some of the tools of the trade. One of those tools was something that Dean Thomas had invented. He called it "Psychic Paper" and claimed that he'd gotten the idea for it from watching the new _Doctor Who_ series on the BBC. When you showed it to someone, they saw what they expected to see. Tell them that you were showing your identification as a police officer before flashing a piece of Psychic Paper at someone, and they'd see police identification.

He didn't expect that it would be difficult to identify the people in the _Prophet_ article. He might not be able to use his wand, but charmed items still worked for him, and he could still use the floo. Armed with his Psychic Paper, and Muggle photographs of the man and woman extracted from the article, he flooed himself to Grimmauld Place.

The old Black house was still Headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix. It had been cleaned up a lot over the last few years, but the portrait of Sirius's mother still hung in the front hall. The curtains that had covered it were replaced by some more substantial shutters, but her muffled shouting could still be heard when an unwary visitor disturbed her. The house-elf heads still lined the stairway. Like the portrait, they were permanently affixed to the walls; no one had managed to find a way to dislodge them.

The Order had curtailed most of its activities, so the house was nearly empty again. Harry was beginning to contemplate selling it, but the Wizarding real-estate market was depressed at the moment with so many former Death Eaters having their property auctioned off by the Ministry at bargain rates. He might get a better price if he just razed the place, removed all the concealment spells from it, and sold it as an empty lot on the Muggle market.

Harry wasn't surprised that there was no one in the kitchen when he tumbled out of the fireplace. He was a little surprised to hear someone falling down the stairs, a few seconds after his arrival, but that gave him enough warning that he was expecting to see a dishevelled Tonks appear in the kitchen door. She looked at him for a moment, with her wand held ready. "Harry?" she asked uncertainly.

"Yeah, it's me."

"Ron told me what happened. Is that really you?"

Harry sighed. "First time we met, you came with the Advance Guard to take me away from Privet Drive…"

"Sorry about that," said Tonks, after he had told her a couple of stories, "but you know what Mad Eye always said: 'Constant…'"

"'…Vigilance!'" Harry finished up with her. "Yeah, I remember."

Tonks tilted her head a bit as she looked at the eye-patch he was wearing. "So, you going to get yourself an eye like his?"

Harry shook his head. "I asked Madam Pomfrey about that. Whatever's happened to me seems to have turned me into a Squib. I can still do some stuff, but a magic eye like Moody's won't work for me."

"Nothing wrong with being a Squib," said Tonks. "The only relatives I've got left who'll talk to me are Muggles."

"I'd love to stay and chat, Tonks, but I've got some things I've got to do."

"That's okay," said Tonks. "I'm coming with you."

"What?" asked Harry.

"I said 'I'm coming with you.' I thought that was pretty clear."

"Why?"

"You're my friend, and it has occurred to some of us that whoever did this to you might be planning to do more. You're pretty much defenceless against magical attacks now. Maybe that was what they had in mind. There are still a few Death Eaters that we haven't caught yet."

"I don't need a babysitter," said Harry.

"I know, but you might need a friend," said Tonks.

* * *

Willow frowned at the sign hanging over the doorway to the pub. "I mean really! That is such a negative stereotype!"

"Don't let it get to you, sweetie," said Kennedy. "Remember, we're trying to be inconspicuous while we check this place out. See if we can find out who was so interested in Xander and Dawn." She opened the door for her girlfriend, and then followed Willow into the dimly lit interior.

It took a few seconds for Willow's eyes to adjust to the dim light. She quickly decided that she wouldn't have to criticize their sign to draw attention to herself in this place. It was early afternoon, during the lull between the lunch crowd and people stopping by for a drink after work, and as she expected there weren't very many people present, but what people there were…

There were maybe a dozen patrons in the pub. One table had a group of four people sitting around it, and there were a couple of pairs of people at other tables. A third of the people present seemed to be lone barflies. The mix was pretty much what she had expected to find at this time of the day.

No, that wasn't what was unusual about them. What was unusual was their clothing. Fully half of the people present were wearing what looked like some sort of robes. No one was wearing anything that looked even remotely in style. If it wasn't for the total lack of a party atmosphere, she would have thought that they'd intruded on some sort of costume party.

The decor of the pub looked like whoever had decorated the place had been trying for an 18th century look…or maybe they had just never updated the decor in the last couple of centuries. Even the lighting seemed to be pre-industrial revolution, coming from candles in sconces on the walls, and a large chandelier hanging in the centre of the room. Willow doubted if this place complied with the London fire codes.

A silence settled over the pub as Willow and Kennedy approached the bar. Willow felt like every eye in the place was on them as she took her seat. The hunchbacked bartender came over to them, with a suspicious look in his eyes. "What can I get for you ladies," he asked. The tone of his voice implied that what he'd really like would be for them to get up and leave.

Kennedy ignored the tone in his voice. "Could we have a couple of beers, please?" she asked. Willow recognized the 'spoiled rich girl' tone she sometimes adopted in her own voice.

The bartender seemed to relax a bit when he heard Kennedy's accent, but he still looked suspicious. "You're Americans?" he asked as he pulled a couple of pints of draught beer for them.

"That's right," said Willow.

He placed the beers on the bar in front of them. "We don't get many visitors from overseas."

"We've been in England for a while, but we've spent most of our time up around Cambridge," said Willow, pulling a ten pound note from her purse to pay for the beers.

The bartender frowned for a moment at the money, as if he wasn't that familiar with it, before he went over to his till. It took longer than Willow expected, like he had to hunt around for the correct change. She took a sip from her beer while she waited.

The beer was warm…even warmer than she was getting used to British beer being. She took another look around the pub, and noticed that some of the patrons were drinking beers of their own. Their glasses where showing the moisture from condensation on the outsides of them. She wondered if her warm beer was meant to discourage her and Kennedy from sticking around.

Willow felt something tickling at her shields. She normally kept herself closely warded, being careful not to interact with the magic around her. She opened her shields a little, as she looked around the pub again, and was surprised by the flood of power that she felt. This place was permeated with magic. She saw the bartender's aura, showing the same sort of power that Xander was currently exhibiting. _Everyone_ was radiating that same sort of power, to a greater or lesser extent, though no one here seemed to have as much of it as Xander did now. She decided to try a little experiment.

Willow reached out with her hand and ran a finger around the rim of first Kennedy's and then her own glass, while concentrating on the perfect temperature for a pint of beer. It was nothing overt. To anyone who didn't know about magic, it would just seem to be an unusual gesture. There was no light show; she didn't speak any phrases in an arcane language. The only thing that anyone might have been able to see was the slight frosting of condensation that started to form on the outsides of their glasses.

It was almost like she'd thrown a switch. A gentle sigh ran through the pub, and everyone relaxed. Quiet conversations picked up again around them—too quiet for Willow to hear. She'd have to ask ask Kennedy later if she overheard anything interesting.

The bartender stopped hunting for change, and quickly pulled half a dozen coins from his till. "Sorry about that," he said as he placed them on the bar in front of her. "I thought at first that you might be a couple of Muggles who somehow found your way in here."

Willow resisted the urge to look too closely at the unfamiliar coins, while she wondered what a Muggle was. "That's alright." She swept them up, and dropped them into her pocket.

"So, you said you're staying up around Cambridge?" asked the bartender. "I wasn't aware of many wizards who lived up that way."

Willow shrugged in what she hoped was a non-committal way. "I've got a friend who's going to university there."

One of the other patrons waved an empty glass, and the bartender excused himself, and went to get him another drink. "What's going on here?" Kennedy whispered into Willow's ear.

"I don't know," Willow whispered back, "but this place is full of magic."

"So, that's what's making me itchy."

"Act like everything's normal, no matter what happens," whispered Willow. "They saw that little cooling spell I did on our beers, and they think we sorta belong, even if we're from the wrong country. Try not to say anything to change that."

The barfly a couple of stools down from Willow pulled a folded newspaper out of her robes, and laid it on the bar. She didn't seem to pay any more attention to it. Willow's eyes widened when she saw the moving picture on the front page. "Excuse me? May I borrow this?" she asked the woman.

"Go ahead. Take it," said the woman. "It's yesterday's edition, anyway."

Willow took the newspaper, and showed the picture of Xander and Dawn to Kennedy.

* * *

Harry's Psychic Paper had worked, just the way it was supposed to. He and Tonks had visited all of the shops that he had identified from the bags that the man who looked like him was carrying, and questioned the shopkeepers about who had been in that day. He had shown them the pictures of the man, and woman, and collected copies of their credit card receipts. Everyone was very cooperative with Inspectors Potter and Tonks of Scotland Yard. They hadn't even needed to use his Psychic Paper to produce a search warrant to look at their records.

He now had a pair of names. At least whoever this was, wasn't really pretending to be him. He was calling himself Alexander Harris, and the woman with him was named Dawn Summers.

They were close to the Leaky Cauldron when they were done with the last shop, so they decided to go there to floo back to Grimmauld Place. He and Tonks entered the pub. Harry waved toward the bar. "Hi Tom!" he called as he followed Tonks to the fireplace.

* * *

Tom was a bit surprised to have the stranger with the eye patch wave and casually call him by name, but he was with Tonks, and she was one of the best known Aurors in Britain. Heroine of the War Against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and holder of the Order of Merlin, Second Class. Whoever the stranger was, he must be okay. This seemed to be his day for strangers in the pub. The two American witches had left just ten minutes earlier. 


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Dawn flipped through the pages of the newspaper. "This is incredible!" She stopped at a picture of a bunch of people whizzing through the air on broomsticks. "You have _got_ to be kidding!"

"Nope," said Willow. "Not me, anyway. Maybe somebody else, but if it's a joke, it's an awfully elaborate one. I'm still trying to figure out the magic that makes these moving pictures work. It looks like these people really do play some sort of sport on flying brooms."

Dawn looked at the some of the advertisements on another page. "It looks like they've got their own secret little world. Clothing stores, book shops, apothecaries…" She picked up the paper and shook it. "…newspaper. Even their own government. The editorial page talks about upcoming elections for a new Minister of Magic."

"They have their own money too." Willow dumped the coins that she had received as change in the bar out on the table. "I think the gold one is called a Galleon, the silver ones are Sickles, and the copper are Knuts. Since I got all this change from a ten, after paying for two beers, I'd guess that a Galleon is worth about five pounds."

Xander took the paper, and flipped back to the front page. "Most important, they seem to know someone who looks like I do now, even if he is some sort of philanderer."

"We don't know about that," said Giles. "As far as I can tell, the only evidence they have of this Harry Potter's misdeeds, is that they have a picture of you, with Dawn. The real Harry Potter may be quite innocent."

"He does seem to be famous among these people, though," said Dawn. "Kinda explains why those guys acted like they'd just seen Elvis."

Willow took the paper back. "Too bad the article doesn't say anything about _why_ he's famous. There's some stuff about how he was breaking girls' hearts back during his school days too, but nothing substantive."

"We need to learn more," said Giles, "but I have no idea how to proceed. I'm fairly certain that we have nothing in our library about these people."

"Um…I may have an idea."

"What is it, Dawn?" asked Willow.

Dawn took the paper, and flipped it over to the back page. She pointed to an ad there. "They're running a new subscription special: One month for a Galleon. We fill in our address on this coupon, and 'owl' it, along with our one Galleon, to the _Daily Prophet_ Subscription Department, and we get the paper delivered to us."

"But how do we 'owl' it?" asked Xander.

"Hey, do I have to think of everything?"

* * *

"So, his name is Alexander Harris," said Harry, "and her name is Dawn Summers. Nearly everyone we talked to agreed that they're Americans."

"That should help narrow it down," said Hermione. "The Home Office keeps track of all foreigners in Britain. I can put a request through from my office to our contact there, for more information about them."

"We have a contact in the Home Office?" asked Ginny.

"There are people scattered all through the British government, who know about us," said Harry. "Some are Squibs. Some are relatives of Muggleborns, or Muggles who married a witch or wizard. Muggle Affairs keeps a list of people who can help us out with things."

"Do we know any more about them?" asked Ron.

"They were shopping for a complete new wardrobe," said Harry. "Shirts, trousers, shoes, socks, pretty much everything. They told a couple of the shopkeepers that their airline lost his luggage."

"So…it would seem that his appearance changed at about the same time that yours did," said Hermione. "He had to buy new clothes, because none of his old ones would fit. If he was responsible for this, he would have known ahead of time, and already had the clothes that he needs."

"Now that we have their names, how do we find them?" asked Ron.

"We've got an address for them, in Cambridge," said Harry.

"Let's go," said Ginny.

"Don't you have to be at work?" asked Hermione.

"I asked Neville to take care of it," said Ginny. "He's going to be taking over a lot of my responsibilities, once I start my maternity leave. I thought I'd give him some early practice."

"Still, it might be better if you stayed behind," said Harry. "We don't know how dangerous this might be."

Ginny turned a simmering glare his way. "Did you like sleeping on the sofa?" she asked sweetly. "We had this discussion after sixth year: you can't protect me by pushing me away."

Harry refused to back down. "I know, but it isn't just you that we have to look out for now." He looked down toward her swollen belly.

"We aren't storming a Death Eater stronghold," said Ginny. "We're going to Cambridge to check on a couple of Muggles, one of whom looks like you now. What can go wrong?"

Ron groaned. "You just had to ask that, didn't you?"

* * *

Willow took a deep breath to calm her nerves before she re-entered the Leaky Cauldron. "Okay, I can do this. I've researched all I can research. I've got my prop wand. I can do this."

She had noticed the wands during her last visit to the pub, and learned a little more about them from reading the newspaper. These people seemed to need them to channel most of their magic. So now she and Kennedy were both carrying slender pieces of wood, that could serve double duty as stakes, if need be. It was Kennedy who had insisted that their fake wands had to be sturdy enough to also be used as stakes. The idea of carrying around a totally useless piece of wood was abhorrent to the Slayer.

It was the same time of day as their last visit, and when Willow looked around the room she recognized many of the same faces. She walked up to the bar, hoping that she looked a lot more confidant than she was feeling, and smiled at the bartender. "Hi, Tom!"

He smiled back at her. "Good day to you, ladies. What can I get you today?" He moved toward his beer taps.

Willow leaned against the bar. "Just some information, this time. We're looking for Diagon Alley."

Tom looked puzzled, and some of the suspicion from the beginning of their first visit came back to his face. "You don't know where Diagon Alley is?"

"We know it's near here," said Willow quickly. "We just don't know how to get there…from here."

"They left that out of _The American Witch's Guide to Britain_," said Kennedy. "We were just told to go to the Leaky Cauldron."

"There's an _American Witch's Guide to Britain_?" asked Tom.

"Not really, but there should be," said Kennedy. "So how do we get to Diagon Alley from here?"

"It's just out the back." Tom pointed toward the rear entrance. "Tap the brick, three up and two across from the dustbin, three times with your wand."

Willow smiled at him. "Thanks." She pushed herself away from the bar, and took hold of Kennedy's arm. "Let's go."

Kennedy waited until they were out of everyone's earshot. "So, what are we going to do when tapping with our fake wands doesn't do anything?" she whispered.

"We don't know that it won't work," whispered Willow. "If it doesn't…I'll think of something." They reached a small, dingy courtyard with a few weeds growing up through cracks in the paving stones. Willow moved to the wall by the trashcan, and tapped her stick against the brick that Tom had told her to. Nothing happened.

"Hmmm…" Willow concentrated for a moment, feeling for the magic. She could tell that there was something there, but she couldn't feel how it was supposed to work. "Nope. Nothing." She turned back to the entrance into the Leaky Cauldron.

Willow tried for her best impression of Buffy's guileless dumb-blonde voice when she asked, "So, was that two up, and three across?" She heard a bit of suppressed laughter ripple through the bar.

Tom turned away, to hide an eye roll Willow was sure, and spoke to a man near the fireplace, whom Willow hadn't noticed when she had first come into the bar. "Neville, why don't you show this nice American witch how to get into Diagon Alley?"

"Of course, Tom." The man flicked his wand over his robes, making some soot disappear, and came toward Willow. "I'm Neville Longbottom. You're from America, are you?"

"That's right." She smiled back at him. "Willow Rosenberg."

"How long have you been in England?"

"A couple of months," said Willow, "but most of it was spent up near Cambridge, or down in Devon. I've only been in London a few times, mostly just passing through." She led Neville out the back door. "Hey Kennedy. This is Neville. He's going to show us how it works." She turned back to him. "I feel so embarrassed, forgetting which brick Tom told me to tap."

"That's all right," said Neville. "I'm always forgetting stuff like that. I'm almost famous for it." He reached out with his wand, and tapped the brick three times.

Willow had her shields all the way down, to better feel the magic. She felt a surge of power from Neville's wand into the brick and spreading out from there, and gave Kennedy a nod. She was confident that she could repeat it for herself, the next time.

"After you, ladies," said Neville with a bow and a flourish, as the bricks in the wall wiggled away from each other, to form an archway wide enough for them all to walk through together. He didn't seem to notice the surprised expression on Kennedy's face, and Willow tried hard to look nonchalant as she took hold of her girlfriend's hand, and then gave her a quick kiss. It was a very effective way of distracting any male from anything that they needed distracting from.

Willow tried hard not to look too much like a gawking tourist as she walked through the archway, and Kennedy had gotten better control of herself after her initial startlement. Her eyes were still wide as she looked around.

Neville was still with them. "So, what are you looking for?" he asked. "I might be able to help you find it."

"Oh, that's alright," said Willow. "You've been more than enough help already. You can go back to the pub, if you like."

"I was just passing through, on my way here, anyway," said Neville.

"Oh, in that case, we were going to start out at Gringotts, to get some money exchanged," said Willow.

"Oh, that's the big white building, there." Neville pointed down the cobbled street to a white marble edifice that rose above all the others. "You can't miss it."

They started to walk down the street, which was crowded with pedestrian traffic, most of it dressed in robes like the people from the Leaky Cauldron, but there were enough other people dressed in what Willow considered more normal clothing that she and Kennedy didn't stand out too much while they chatted with Neville. They told him that they were looking to buy some books, so he pointed out Flourish and Blotts as they passed it. He didn't look too happy when Willow asked about finding the _Daily Prophet_ offices.

"There's something wrong with the _Daily Prophet_?" she asked.

Neville shrugged, and looked a little embarrassed. "They're mostly okay, if you stick to things like the Quidditch scores, and the adverts. For most of their 'news' though, they just reprint whatever the Ministry feeds them, or they're just spreading gossip."

"You mean like that story about Harry Potter a couple of days ago?" asked Willow.

"_Especially_ if it's got anything to do with Harry," said Neville. "After that last story, Ginny was ready to really blast them."

"You know Harry Potter?" asked Kennedy.

"Yeah." Neville looked even more embarrassed. "We were in the same year, and house at Hogwarts."

Kennedy affected the breathy voice of a fangirl, looking for news of her favourite celebrity. "What's he _really_ like?"

"_Nothing_ like what that Skeeter woman keeps writing about him. He's a nice bloke, a good friend." He frowned at Kennedy. "He hates people making a fuss over him. He just wants to live his life. Do his job, raise his family, and _never_ have to fight another dark wizard."

"So, you're friends with him?" asked Willow.

"Yeah, we're good friends, and it really bothers him and Ginny the way that the _Daily Prophet_ keeps printing nonsense about them."

"Like that story a couple of days ago," said Willow.

"Yeah," said Neville. "I don't know where that picture came from, but Harry wasn't even in London that day."

"Where was he?" asked Kennedy.

Neville shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I don't talk about things like that with strangers. Even when they're as charming as you."

"Oh, you're right. We're being awfully nosey," said Willow. "I'm sorry about that."

"That's alright," said Neville. "We're here."

"Hmm?"

Neville waved his hand, pointing to the building beside them. "Gringotts Bank."

Willow felt Kennedy tensing, but she ignored her for a moment, keeping her attention on Neville. "Oh, thanks a bunch! I hope we didn't take you too far out of your way."

"No trouble at all," said Neville. "I'm heading farther down the alley, to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Why don't you drop in, once you've done your shopping?"

"We'll see," said Willow, not wanting to make any commitments. "I'm not sure if we'll have time, once we're done our shopping."

"In that case, it's been a pleasure meeting you. I hope to do so again, soon." Neville gave them a final wave, and continued on down the street on his own.

Willow turned to the bank, and drew in a sharp breath as she saw who, or rather what, was standing beside the door. Now she knew what had caused Kennedy to tense up.

"Is that some sort of demon?" Kennedy asked quietly.

Willow looked at the short creature, dressed in a red and gold uniform, standing guard beside the bank doors. People were passing in and out of the building without sparing it a second glance. "I think…it's a goblin!"

"A goblin?"

"Yeah," said Willow. "They're supposed to have vanished centuries ago! There are stories about them being in some sort of war with a group of wizards, and then they both vanished. The wizards, and the goblins!"

Kennedy had a look around. "Maybe we just found where they all disappeared to."


	6. Chapter 5

_I don't usually do Author's Notes, I think a story should be self-contained, but I think I need to make a few about this story._

_First of all, an apology for taking almost a year between updates. _

_Secondly, I started this before JKR got around to publishing "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" so there are some discrepancies. For the purposes of this story assume that everything in DH happened pretty much the way JKR said it did, but different people died. (I've already established that three characters that JKR killed are still alive, and killed one that JKR let live, and I need one more that she killed, whom I haven't mentioned yet, to still be alive.)_

_Thirdly, elements of the scene in the bank bear a strong resemblance to a scene in "Harry Potter and the Exiled Slayer" by M. Scott Eiland. (www dot fanfiction dot net/s/2778565/) I had this scene in my head __**before**__ I read his version of a visit of a Slayer to Gringotts'. The resemblance is purely coincidental. (I do commend Scott's story, and all the others he has written, to all readers.)_

**Chapter 5**

They Apparated into a quiet courtyard in Cambridge with a _pop_! It had been a long time since Harry'd had to Side-Along-Apparate with anyone, and the experience was just as unpleasant as he remembered it being. He shook his head to clear it while looking around to see if anyone had noticed them, but the few Muggles in sight were completely ignoring them. The courtyard's concealment charms seemed to be working. He released Ginny's arm. He still wasn't happy about her being there, but Ron and Hermione had sided with her and he hadn't been able to talk her out of coming. They had been quite adamant that if anyone was to be left behind, it would be Harry, since he was unable to use magic to defend himself.

It was only a few blocks through the old city to the address that they had for Alexander Harris. The building looked to be over a century old, but it had been recently renovated to hold several flats. Hermione used an _Alohomora_ spell to get past the front door, without having to have anyone buzz them in. They made their way up the stairs to the second storey where Alexander Harris shared a flat with Dawn Summers. Ron knocked on the door.

There was no answer, and they couldn't hear anyone moving inside the flat. He knocked again, harder. There was still no response.

"Okay." Hermione looked up and down the hall, to make sure that no one was watching, and then pointed her wand at the lock. "_Alohomora!_" The door swung open.

They quickly entered the apartment, closed the door behind them, and started to look around. Harry found the light switch, and turned it on. None of them took any notice of the keypad by the door.

The sitting room of the apartment was clean, but full of the clutter of people who didn't care too much about neatness. Books and papers were sitting out on tables; cushions were askew on the couch, where they had been arranged more for comfort than appearance. Clean dishes had been left in the rack beside the kitchen sink to dry, rather than being put away into cupboards.

Ron had picked up a photograph from a shelf. "Hey Harry, take a look at this!" He handed it over to him.

The picture was of a group of people standing on a wooden bridge over a small river. One of them had the face that Harry still wasn't used to seeing looking back at him in the mirror, but in the photo he seemed to have both eyes. Another was the girl who had been seen with "him" outside the Leaky Cauldron. There were two other young women, a blonde and a redhead—both about his own age—and an older, grey haired man, with them in the picture.

"It looks like you somehow managed to switch appearances with this bloke," said Ron, pointing to another picture of just him—again, with two eyes—and the girl.

Hermione was examining the book shelves that covered one entire wall of the main sitting room. "They've got books here on history, languages, mythology…" She frowned, and reached for one old volume. "I think I remember seeing a copy of this one in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library." She opened the book and leafed through its pages. "This is a book on Ancient Magic!" She looked back at the shelves. "They've got dozens of books about it!"

* * *

Dawn and Xander's phones both rang at the same time. They pulled them out, and looked at the text message displayed on their screens. "What's up?" asked Buffy. 

"Someone set of the alarm in our apartment," said Dawn.

"Let's go," said Buffy, "I'm driving."

* * *

Willow heard a bell toll as she and Kennedy passed through the large bronze doors. The sound reverberated through the vast hall, making everyone stop and look around. The other customers in the bank didn't seem to know what to make of the noise, but all of the goblins were looking toward the door—at them. 

"Okay," said Kennedy, "we seem to have set off some sort of alarm."

Willow felt Kennedy tensing for action beside her, and action by a Slayer was almost always of the violent sort, so she placed her hand on Kennedy's elbow. "Don't do anything," she said softly. "Let's see how this develops."

A goblin came toward them, and bowed deeply, "How may I be of service to the Slayer?" he asked. He was a tiny little creature, barely three feet tall, with an over-large head, and wispy grey hair.

"Uh…you know who I am?" asked Kennedy.

"Of course, it has only been three hundred years since the last time a Slayer visited Gringotts. Humans may have short memories, but goblins do not." The goblin gave her a little bow. "I am Narlblat. How may I assist you?"

"Only three hundred years, huh?" asked Willow.

"Three hundred twenty-four years, to be more precise," said Narlblat. He gestured with his hand toward the side of the bank's main hall. "Please, if you'll come this way, we can discuss the status of your account."

"My account?" asked Kennedy.

"Yes," said Narlblat. "The last Slayer to visit Gringotts opened an account with us." He ushered them through a doorway, into a small office, and took a seat behind an antique wooden desk that was nearly as tall as it was. Narlblat pumped a lever at the side of his chair, raising him up to desk level.

"How much did she deposit?" asked Willow, taking a seat of her own in front of the desk, and gesturing Kennedy into another.

The goblin opened a drawer in the desk, and riffled through it until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a file, and leafed through it. "One thousand Galleons," he said.

"Wow!" said Willow. "A thousand Galleons, collecting interest over three hundred and twenty-four years. That must add up to quite a lot by now. What sort of rate do you pay?"

"It has varied somewhat, over the last few centuries," said Narlblat. His fingers started to fly over a three dimensional abacus on his desk. "Hmm…The average interest rate over the last three centuries has been three point five seven two percent, compensating for the nineteenth century inflation cycle, the depression of nineteen-sixty…" Gold beads shuttled back and forth along thin silver wires.

Willow had done the rough calculation in her head. "Three point five percent over three hundred and twenty years! That's like—sixty million Galleons now!"

"Well, yes, it would be, if that was all there was to it," said Narlblat.

"What else is there?" asked Kennedy.

"Well, we have three hundred twenty-four years of service charges," said Narlblat. He flipped through the file, consulting figures written on its pages. "The revaluation of the Galleon in 1845, the account surtax of 1973, vault fees…" His fingers flew over the beads of his abacus.

"So, what's the balance?" asked Willow.

The beads stood still. "Three hundred twenty-seven Galleons, sixteen Sickles, and twenty-three Knuts," said Narlblat.

"What!" asked Kennedy. "I've only got three hundred Galleons left of the thousand that was deposited?"

"Oh no!" said Narlblat. "That's how much you owe us."

* * *

Ginny came out of the bathroom. "Hey Harry, take a look at this." She held up a small plastic case, that seemed to hold an eye. "This looks like a match for yours." 

Harry looked at the eye in the case. It did seem to match the colour of his new eye. He was pretty sure that if he tried it, it would fit in the socket of the eye he was missing, but he really didn't want to try that experiment. Even if it did fit, he didn't think it would feel right. He remembered how Mad-Eye had felt about his own eye, after it had been worn by the impostor: it had never seemed to be clean to him after that. He handed it back to Ginny. "Put it back where you found it."

Ron looked through a doorway into another room. "This looks like some sort of office."

Harry, Ginny and Hermione followed him through the door, and looked around. There was a desk with a new looking computer on it, more bookshelves, filing cabinets, and a drafting table which had architect's drawings of a large building on it. Harry looked them over, and saw that they were captioned: "Council HQ, Waterbeach." He looked through some stacks of paper on the desk, and saw invoices for construction materials, tradesmen contracts, copies of building permits and other such things, all for the same address in Waterbeach.

Hermione had been looking through more of the papers stacked on the desk. "These look like university course notes…It looks like Dawn Summers is enrolled there, studying Linguistics, and Mythology… Oh, she got an A on her latest assignment…"

"Acceptable?" asked Ron.

"No, for Muggles, a A is the same as an 'Outstanding.'"

"Weird!" said Ron.

Harry tried the computer that was sitting on the desk. It came right to life with a "_boing!_" noise when he moved the mouse, but it only displayed a window asking for a password. He didn't have any clue what it might be, and there weren't any convenient scraps of paper in sight with strange words written on them. Magic wouldn't be any help here either, even if he could do any. Magic performed on computers tended to just made them crash. Muggle Affairs knew of a few experts who might have been able to access the data on it, but they had neither the time, nor a legitimate reason to call them in to help.

* * *

Normally, it took almost twenty minutes to drive from the new Council Headquarters to Dawn and Xander's apartment. Buffy did it in just over five, paying no attention at all to speed limits, and hardly any to such petty annoyances as stop signs, or traffic lights. 

Dawn wasn't sure which was worse: keeping her eyes open, or closed. With her eyes closed she didn't _see_ any of the near misses as Buffy swerved through the traffic. She also had no warning when they were about to take a sharp turn, or swerve to avoid other traffic or pedestrians on the road. Sometimes she could hear the blaring of horns, fading away behind them, after some of Buffy's more violent manoeuvres.

She could hear Xander muttering "Never again!" to himself, over and over. "I don't care what the emergency is! I'm never getting in a car that Buffy's driving, ever again!" Of course, he'd said that before, and every time he swore that it _would_ be the last time, but he always did it again.

The car screeched to a stop, and Dawn opened her eyes to see her apartment building. They all jumped from the car, leaving it sitting askew in a no-parking zone, and ran into the building.

* * *

Harry heard a key scraping in the lock of the front door. Ginny grabbed his arm, and he felt her twisting, Disapparating out of the flat, back to the garden of their cottage. Ron and Hermione _cracked_ into the garden just a second after they had arrived.

* * *

Dawn heard a series of loud _pop_s, just as Buffy was pushing the door open. Buffy was the first into the apartment, with Xander right behind her. Dawn was the last one through the door. She looked quickly around, but didn't see anything that looked out of place: there was no one there, other than themselves. 

"What was that noise," asked Xander.

"I caught a glimpse of someone," said Buffy. "The last 'snap' was him vanishing. I guess he had some friends with him."

They quickly checked the bedroom, bath, and office, but they didn't find anyone, or anything, hiding in any of the rooms.

"Anything missing?" asked Buffy.

"I haven't noticed anything," said Xander. "We'll have to look more closely to be sure, but we really haven't got that much that's worth stealing. The TV, stereo, and computers are all still here."

"If they could use magic to teleport away, I doubt if they were here to steal anything as mundane as our TV," said Dawn. "I don't think that they were looking for anything that they could fence." She looked around the room again, seeing nothing but the usual chaos. "There are disadvantages to not being obsessive about tidying up after yourself."

"They might have tried to download something off the computer," said Xander.

"Everything important on it is well encrypted," said Dawn. She went into the office, and saw the password screen. "Did you touch this, Xander?" she called out to him.

"Touch what?" Xander came back into the office, to see what she was talking about, and saw her pointing at the screen. "No. Why?"

"Did you notice if it was awake when you were in here before?"

"I think it was, but I'm not sure," said Xander. "I don't remember it waking up. I didn't hear the '_boing!_'"

"Neither did I." Dawn typed in her password. "I'll check the logs, see if anyone tried to access anything while we were out."

* * *

"I can't believe that they tried to charge us all those extra fees!" said Kennedy as they walked back down the steps from the entrance to the bank. 

"I know," said Willow. "And I thought dealing with Citibank was bad. Still, we've got our Galleons now!" She shook the bag containing two hundred of the gold coins—worth about a thousand pounds.

"I still think they short-changed us," said Kennedy.

"I'm sure of it," said Willow. "I'm just happy we got out of there without us owning them anything." Some days she actually missed Anya._She_ would have straightened them out in short order.

Still, Willow figured that they had made out okay. The goblins had their own links into the wider world's banking systems, and once Narlblat had gotten a look at the sort of assets that the Council had at its command, he'd been quite happy to wave the outstanding charges on the Slayer's account, in the hope of getting a piece of their business in the future. He had quickly agreed that her account should have just been closed when its balance had dropped to zero.

"So, where to first?" asked Kennedy. "The book store, or the newspaper office?"

"Let's start with the newspaper," said Willow. "Though from what Neville had to say about it, I'm not sure how useful it will be."

"If nothing else, we can catch up on the Quidditch scores," said Kennedy.

* * *

Dobby served them tea in the sitting room of Harry and Ginny's cottage while they tried to figure out what they'd learned. It wasn't much. 

"Alexander Harris seems to be a building contractor," said Hermione, "and Dawn Summers is a student at Cambridge. If it wasn't for those books on Ancient Magic, I'd say that they were just a couple of fairly normal Muggles."

"So, what's our next move?" asked Ron.

Ginny set her tea cup on the table in front of her. "This may seem like a radical idea, but we might try talking to him."


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"And how do we do that?" asked Ron. "Just ring him up? We don't even have his number."

"Yes we do." Ginny held up a business card. "I swiped this. It has his phone number on it."

"I think that talking to them might be a good next step," said Hermione, "but I want to learn a little more, first. We should be getting the report from the Home Office on Alexander Harris and Dawn Summers soon."

* * *

As far as Dawn and Xander could tell, there was nothing missing from their apartment. They thought that a couple of items might have been moved, but they couldn't even be sure about that. Dawn's examination of the computer activity logs didn't show any attempts to access it, only that it had been awakened just a couple of minutes after the apartment alarm had gone off. Willow had called while they were still searching, to report the success of her shopping trip to Diagon Alley, and been told to meet them at the flat.

When she and Kennedy arrived in the apartment, Willow took the heavy bag that Kennedy was carrying and started pulling books from it. "We've got this one: _The Boy Who Lived: An Unauthorized Autobiography_ by Rita Skeeter."

Dawn took the volume, and looked at the moving picture on the cover. It showed a spectacularly bad fashion disaster of a woman with curly blonde hair, in green robes and rhinestone glasses, who kept dragging a boy, a younger version of what Xander now looked like, back onto the cover from which he seemed to be trying to escape. "Unauthorized Autobiography? Isn't that an oxymoron?"

"Yeah," said Willow. "From what Neville said, we should take everything that Skeeter writes with a very large grain of salt. I talked a bit with the bookshop owner, and he agreed with Neville, but the book is a best seller. He recommended this one: _The Rise and Fall of Lord V—_ by Hermione Granger."

"Who's Neville?" asked Buffy.

"He's a guy we met; showed us around a bit. He seemed nice enough. He said he was a friend of this Harry Potter's," said Kennedy.

"And who, or what, is a Lord V—?" asked Xander.

"Lord Voldemort," said Willow. "An evil wizard who was making a major nuisance of himself a few years ago. From what I've read, these people have a very hard time saying his name. It doesn't appear at all in Skeeter's book, she calls him things like 'You-Know-Who,' and 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,' but Granger is quite free with it, inside her book. It's only on the cover that they put a sticker over it. The Flourish and Blotts manager told me that Granger's prose is a lot less florid than Skeeter's, and her factual content is much higher." Willow flipped through the pages of Granger's book. "I've skimmed both of them, and even without knowing anything else about this, I think I have to agree with him. Skeeter tends to rely mostly on unsubstantiated gossip, but Granger's book is full of footnotes, and references. She might be a bit biased though, since she was one of Potter's best friends through school, and from what I've read, still is.

"The upshot is that Harry Potter was instrumental in bringing about Voldemort's downfall, a few times. He knocked Voldemort's plans off the rails the first time in 1981, and then destroyed him utterly in 98."

"81!" said Xander. "I was only a year old then."

"So was Harry Potter," said Willow. "It wasn't really public knowledge at the time, but it was really his mother who did it. She used her own death, protecting her son from Voldemort, to energize a very powerful protection spell for him. As a result, when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, his spell backfired, and nearly destroyed him."

"Why was this guy trying to kill a baby in the first place?" asked Buffy.

"A prophecy," said Willow, which got groans from everyone in the room. "Yeah, that's pretty much the way it worked out, too. Doesn't anyone read _Oedipus Rex_ anymore? Voldemort spent so much effort trying to kill this one child to keep a prophecy from coming true, that he let himself get distracted from his other evil plans. Not only that, but the things he kept doing to try to kill the boy in the end just gave Harry Potter more and more power over Voldemort.

"They had their final showdown when Potter was 17, and that time Potter finished him off for good, which made him almost a super-hero, as far as most wizards were concerned."

"Which kinda explains why those guys who spotted me, acted that way," said Xander.

* * *

There was a knock on the door. Dobby appeared in the sitting room a few seconds later, and announced, "The Lupin family is here, Harry Potter." He ushered Tonks, Remus, and little Teddy Lupin into the room.

Harry rose quickly to his feet. "Remus! It's good to see you! How are you feeling?"

"The full moon is past, for another month. I would have been here sooner, otherwise."

Harry nodded in understanding. The monthly shifts into his werewolf form were wearing on Remus, though Harry did think that he usually looked better than he had when they'd first met. Married life was agreeing with his old teacher. That wasn't true now, though. Remus was looking very tired, and very worried.

Teddy looked at Harry, his features changing, blending into a smaller scale mirror of Harry's new face, as they tended to do these days whenever he met someone new. Harry was happy to see that he didn't go so far as to lose his eye. His abilities as a Metamorphmagus didn't go that far, yet. "Are you really my Uncle Harry?" he asked.

Harry smiled and nodded. "Yes, I am."

"You look funny. Are you becoming a 'morphmagus too?"

"Nope," said Harry. "Something happened, and now my face is stuck this way. Does it bother you?"

Teddy's features changed again, into the younger melding of his parents' faces that was his normal appearance. "No. Most people have boring faces that never change. I like your new face."

"Well, I'm glad that there's someone who thinks so," said Harry.

"Can I go play with Dobby?"

"Of course you can!" said Harry. "Why don't you go out in the back garden with him, and chase away the gnomes."

Teddy ran off, calling for Dobby to come with him. He and the house-elf were great friends, and you really couldn't ask for a better baby sitter.

"So, Remus, no twenty questions? You're not going to ask me what creature was in your office, the first time I saw you there?"

"I figured you must be getting tired of doing that," said Remus. "Dora already took care of verifying who you are, and a wise husband never contradicts his wife."

"Too bad Ron hasn't learned that," said Hermione.

"Yes I have!" said Ron, indignantly, then he looked a little sheepish. "I was just never was the one that anybody looked to for wisdom," he added under his breath.

"So, why are you here?" asked Harry. "Not that it isn't great to see you, but you didn't come over so Teddy could play with Dobby, and I don't think it was just so you could get a look at my new face. What's up?"

Tonks waved a large envelope that she had brought in with her. "The information we asked for from the Muggle government came into the Aurors' Office."

"Oh, good!" said Hermione, holding out her hand. "May I see it, please?"

"That's why I brought it," said Tonks, handing the envelope over to her.

Hermione opened it, and pulled out several pages of Muggle paper. She started reading through them quickly, and then handing them off to Harry, who barely had time to skim over each one before getting the next from her. They were surprisingly unsurprising. Alexander Harris was an American, in England working for a company that was only identified as ICSW. Dawn Summers was here on a student visa, with a scholarship to Cambridge, also from ICSW. They had both been in the country for nearly two years now.

"I showed those to Remus, on the way over here," said Tonks. "He hasn't told me why he wanted to see them, or why they've upset him so."

"Ah, well, they just corroborated an idea that I had," said Remus. "After hearing what happened to you, and then that there was a Muggle wandering around London with your face, I was reminded of something from years ago. I'm afraid that things are starting to make sense."

"Really?" asked Ginny, "Because to me, things just seem to be getting more confusing."

"Oh, if I'm right, this could be a real mess to get sorted out. Knowing how it got started is just going to be the beginning of it."

"How did it get started?" asked Hermione.

"Well, I suppose, it all goes back to when James and Sirius first decided to become Animagi—"

"_What?_" burst out Ron. "That was thirty years ago!"

"Yes," said Remus, "and that's why this is going to be such an awful mess to get straightened out. Thirty years ago, when they first started researching how to become Animagi, James and Sirius found another spell. It seemed pretty trivial at the time. I never learned the details of how it worked, or why it was buried in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library—maybe it was in a book that had other, Darker spells—but what it did was fairly simple: it exchanged one person's looks for another's."

"Well, that certainly seems to be what happened to me," said Harry, "but why? If this is someone's idea of a joke, I don't get it, and no one has shown up to laugh about it, yet."

"I don't think it was done as a joke," said Remus.

"Why would anyone want to switch Harry with this Harris fellow, if not for a joke?" asked Ginny. "It doesn't seem to be him who did it: aside from the fact that he's a Muggle, he seems to have been taken as much by surprise as Harry."

"No, if I'm right, it wasn't Harris who was responsible for this mess."

Remus rubbed his face, which was looking as haggard as Harry had ever seen it. "Er, would you like a drink?" he asked.

"I wouldn't say 'no' to one."

Harry went to the cabinet in which he kept his bottle of Ogdens Old Firewhiskey, and poured a generous portion into a glass for Remus. "Leave the bottle out," said Remus. "I think you're going to want some yourself when I'm done." He took a sip from the glass. "Where was I? Oh, yes, James and Sirius had found the switching spell…

"It didn't really seem to be all that useful, to me. They mostly just used it to fool their friends, pretending to be each other, not so unlike Fred and George. They used it a couple of times so that Sirius could sit a detention for James, if James had a date with Lily, or something like that, but she really didn't like them doing that—as far as anyone else could tell, it looked like she was going out with Sirius, which led to some misunderstandings that he found hilarious, but no one else was amused by them—so they didn't do it often."

"Yes," said Hermione, "But what's that all got to do with what happened to Harry last week?"

"For that we need to jump forward a couple of decades, to a Halloween night…" Remus held up his glass and looked at the golden liquid inside it. "…and what started out as a full bottle of Ogdens Old."

He took another sip from his glass. "It was when Sirius was stuck in Grimmauld Place, with Professor Dumbledore not letting him go out anywhere. It was the fourteenth anniversary of James and Lily's deaths. He was feeling miserable; I was feeling miserable; so we decided to get miserably drunk together.

"By the time we got to the bottom of the bottle, we were both pretty much snockered, and neither of us was making any sense. Sirius started rambling on about how he'd tried to save Harry from the Dursleys, before going after Wormtail. How he would have been better off in Sunnydale. But it hadn't worked, and Dumbledore must have discovered the switch, and Harry must never find out about it. I never understood what he meant, and by the time I'd sobered up, and recovered from the hangover, I'd pretty much forgotten all about it. It only just came back to me the other day. Your change in appearance, and this other bloke looking like you now … It reminded me of James and Sirius's old switching spell, and those things Sirius said that Halloween … and it occurred to me … what if it _had_ worked, and Dumbledore _hadn't_ discovered the switch?" He drained his glass, and banged it down on the table.

There was stunned silence in the room, that lasted for several seconds.

"So, you're saying that I'm not really me?" asked Harry. "That I'm really this Harris person, and _he's_ the real Harry Potter?"

"How could that be?" asked Ginny. "I mean, he's always been Harry!"

"He's the person you have always known as Harry," said Remus, "but if I'm right, you've never met the real Harry Potter, and I haven't seen him since he was a baby."

"But the prophecy!" said Ron. "It said that Harry would be the one to defeat Voldemort, and he did!"

"That prophecy always had an element of self fulfillment in it," said Remus. "From the day Voldemort learned of it, Harry became a target, and one of them was bound to die."

"But what about the Horcrux?" asked Hermione. "When he killed Harry's parents, he made Harry one of his Horcruxes. That's what protected Harry from the second killing curse. If Harry wasn't really Harry…"

"I don't know," said Remus. "Maybe the spell switched more than looks. It seems to have taken away Harry's magic. Maybe it shifted the Horcrux too."

"If it did something like that, wouldn't Dad and Sirius have noticed, when they were doing it back in Hogwarts?"

"Would they?" asked Remus. "They were both powerful wizards. They'd trade wands whenever they switched, or it would have been a dead give-away, and their wands always worked just as well. Even their Animagus forms switched when they did it. James would become a dog, and Sirius would become a stag."

"But I remember it," said Harry. "I remember hearing my parents die. I remember the sound of the Killing Curse."

"Do you?" asked Remus. "Do you _really_ remember? Memory is a tricky thing, especially of something that happened when you were very young. Do you really remember James and Lily's deaths, or do you just remember imagining their deaths, after you had heard about them?"

Harry reached for the Firewhiskey bottle. He refilled Remus's glass. "You were right, I do want a drink." He poured some Firewhiskey into his empty tea cup. After a glance at his friends, he gave some to Ron and Hermione. Ginny looked like she wanted some too, but she shook her head, while rubbing her pregnant belly. He looked at Tonks, and held the bottle up in a silent offer, but she waved it away.

Harry took a swig from his cup. "And you were right about this being a god-awful mess." Everyone else took a sip as well.

"But why now?" asked Ginny, after everyone had set their cups back down. "Why did Harry change now?"

"I don't know," said Hermione. "Maybe the spell just wore off, after twenty-three years. Or maybe something happened to this Harris fellow. He does seem to be involved with magic, of some sort."

"What?" asked Tonks.

"There were books on Ancient Magic in his flat," said Hermione, "and he is from Sunnydale. That was a major mystical convergence for Dark forces. Why Sirius thought _that_ would be a good place to send Harry!"

"At the time, the Sunnydale convergence had been quiet for decades," said Remus. "If it was mentioned in our DADA classes at the time, it would have only been in passing. I doubt if Sirius would have remembered. Was it mentioned at all, while you were in school?"

"I never heard of it, then," said Ron. "It was only later, after I became a Hit Wizard, that I learned anything about it." His face scrunched up in a frown. "It was only during our last couple of years at Hogwarts that it started to erupt again, and by then, everyone was so caught up with the war, that it never came to anyone's notice. We had bigger problems, much closer to home."

"What do we do now?" asked Ginny.

"I think it's time that we followed your suggestion, and made a phone call," said Harry.


	8. Chapter 7

_**Chapter 7**_

It sounded like telephones ringing in stereo. Everyone checked their cell phones. "One of them's me," said Willow, pulling her phone from her pocket, flipping it open, and checking its display. "It's Giles." She lifted the phone to her ear. "Hey, Giles! What's up?"

With Willow's phone silenced, it became clear that the other ringing sound was coming from the apartment's office. "I'll get it," said Xander. "I'm expecting a call about that leaking pipe in the east wing." He disappeared through the office door.

"Really?" asked Willow. "Who was asking? … Didn't anyone think that was strange? … Did they get the full package, or just the public version? … Did they say why they wanted the information? … Okay, talk to you soon. Bye!" She snapped her phone shut, with a frown on her face.

"So, what was that about?" asked Dawn.

"A Sir Humphrey Appleby, from the Department of Administrative Affairs, pulled yours and Xander's files from the British Home Office," said Willow.

"Which ones did they get, and why did they want them?" asked Buffy.

"The public consumption versions," said Willow. "There was nothing in the request about why they wanted the information, which I suppose is a good thing. If it had come in with a plausible reason for asking, they might have gotten the full package."

"So, who is this Sir Humphrey guy?" asked Buffy. "The name sounds familiar. Have I already given him the lecture, or am I going to have to explain to another government bureaucrat why it's a really bad idea to mess with us?"

"That's just it," said Willow. "He doesn't exist, and neither does his department—outside of an 80s Britcom—but no one in the Home Office seems to have noticed that when they were complying with his request for information. They just put the files into the interdepartmental mail system, and they vanished. They didn't come back as not being deliverable, or left sitting in the mailroom. They got delivered to someone."

Xander came back out of the office with a bemused expression on his face.

"So, got the plumbing problem all patched up?" asked Buffy.

"No," said Xander. "It wasn't the plumbers. It was Harry Potter—sounding remarkably like I sound like in recordings, if you ignore the accent. He wants to talk to me about our mutual problem."

"Just you?" asked Dawn.

"No, he said I could bring some friends along. His wife wants to meet the girl that the paper has been accusing him of having an affair with."

* * *

Saint James Park was lovely in the spring. The trees were covered with buds of new growth, flowers were blooming, birds were singing. Neville looked around again for anything that didn't belong. Most of the tourists had disappeared from this part of the park, drawn to the Changing of the Guard ceremony that would be starting in a few minutes at Buckingham Palace.

A large table had been set up in the partial shade provided by one of the trees, with eight chairs—four on each side—set up around it. Four of the chairs were waiting for Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Remus, and the other four were waiting for this Zander Harris guy, and three of his friends.

Neville saw one little old lady that he thought might be Tonks—you never really knew with her—and he spotted Ron trying to look inconspicuous. There also seemed to be a few more young Muggle women in the park than he would have expected. A couple of them seemed to be doing some sort of strange slow motion dance—without any accompanying music—and there was another pair who were tossing a spinning disk back and forth between each other.

Another girl was looking at him, and he did a double take when he recognized her. She was one of the American witches that he had met in Diagon Alley the other day. What was she doing here? He supposed that he would find out soon enough. She smiled, and walked toward him.

"Er, hello, um, Kennedy, was it?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

Her grin broadened. "That's right, and I guess I'm here for the same reason you are: I'm watching my friend's back."

"You're a friend of Harris's?"

"Yep, and you're a friend of Potter's, along with her …" Kennedy nodded toward Tonks. "… and him …" A nod toward Ron. "… and a couple other people hiding in the bushes. There's even one guy who seems to be invisible."

Neville was surprised that she'd spotted his friends, even Dean Thomas, who had borrowed Harry's invisibility cloak. He knew that many wizards stuck out like sore thumbs when they tried to pass as Muggles, but everyone here today was either Muggleborn, or had had their wardrobes approved by Harry and Hermione, who did know how Muggles dressed. "How did you do that?" he asked.

"Not me," said Kennedy. "My girl Willow did it. She tells me that you people have very distinctive auras."

"Auras?" asked Neville. Auras were something that Professor Trelawney talked about, and Neville had thought that they were nonsense, like most of the other things she said, but maybe he'd have to reconsider that. He still didn't really believe it.

"Yep," said Kennedy. She checked her watch. "And it looks like it's show-time. Here come my friends, and it looks like yours are here too."

Neville looked around, and he saw two groups of people approaching the table. Harry, Ginny, Hermione and Mr Lupin in one, and another group with a man who _looked_ like Harry, the girl from the _Daily Prophet_ picture, Willow, and an older gentleman.

* * *

Xander recognized all four of the people who stood across the table from him and his friends. There had been pictures of three of them in the books that Willow had brought back from Diagon Alley, and the fourth looked like he had stepped out of a picture of himself.

"Harry Potter, I presume," he said, holding out his hand to his doppelgänger.

The guy who looked like him grasped his hand, while keeping a wary expression on his face. "So, you're Alexander Harris. I'd like to say that I'm pleased to meet you, but under the circumstances…"

Hearing his voice, but with an English accent, seemed very strange to Xander. Even after living here for a couple of years, he still couldn't do an English accent to save his life—he knew; he'd tried. "Please, call me Xander. My mom's the only one who ever calls me 'Alexander'."

"Okay, Xander," said Harry. "This is my wife, Ginny…" He indicated the very pregnant young woman by his side. "…and our friends Hermione Granger, and Remus Lupin."

"How do you do," said Xander. He held his hand out toward Dawn. "This is my girlfriend, Dawn Summers, and our friends Willow Rosenberg, and Rupert Giles."

Everyone smiled, and said "hello" to everyone else, and they all took seats lined up on opposite sides of the table, with everyone facing their counterpart on the other side.

"So," said Harry. "We seem to have a situation here. I'm not sure how much you know about me…"

"Quite a bit, actually," said Willow. She produced the Rita Skeeter book from out of her bag, and Xander saw everyone on the other side of the table wince.

"You can't really—"

Willow cut Hermione off. "Yeah, I know." She pulled out the second book, the one Hermione had written, out of her bag and laid it on the table beside the other. "This one seems to be much more informative."

Everyone looked much happier to see that book, except Hermione, who blushed a little.

"Though I can tell why the Skeeter book is a best seller," said Willow. "It is a much more exciting read, even if it does play a little fast and loose with the facts."

"More like she just made stuff up, if she didn't know the truth, or thought that the truth wasn't exciting enough," muttered Harry.

"So, you know all about us, but we know hardly anything about you," said Hermione.

"Didn't learn much, breaking into our flat?" asked Dawn.

"About the only useful thing we learned there was your phone number," said Harry.

"We are listed," said Xander.

"Yes, but we still wanted to get a look at the place where the bloke pretending to be me was living," said Harry.

"Hey! I'm not pretending to be anyone!" said Xander. "I didn't plan for this to happen!"

"We had pretty much figured that out," said Hermione. "If you had planned this, you wouldn't have had to go shopping for new clothes. We did learn something else during our visit to your flat: you do know something about magic."

"That's because I'm a witch," said Willow.

"You don't have a wand," said Hermione.

"I've never needed one," said Willow. "I've never met anyone who used one before we found The Leaky Cauldron."

"You practice Ancient Magic?" asked Hermione.

"Some people call it that," said Willow. "It's always been just plain old regular magic to me."

"Isn't Ancient Magic supposed to be Dark?" asked Ginny.

"Darkness is largely a matter of intent, and how it is used," said Giles. "Magic is a tool, that can be used for good, or ill."

"The exact same spell, can save a life, or take it, depending on how it is used," said Willow. "A levitation spell can be used to save someone from falling, or to drop them on their head from a great height."

"Or in our case, a spell meant to strip away magical disguises, somehow made me look like Harry, and him look like me," said Xander. "Would you people have any idea why that happened?"

"We have a theory," said Hermione.

* * *

Harry watched the strangers as they listened to Remus tell them about the spell that Sirius had found, and what he had said on that drunken Halloween night several years ago. They caught on to the implication pretty quickly, that Harris was the _real_ Harry Potter, and that Harry was the real Xander Harris.

Despite that, Harry couldn't help thinking about the comment that Harris had made earlier, about his mother. It was just beginning to dawn on him that if they were right about what had happened, he might have living parents. He didn't know how that made him feel. On the one hand, he had become used to thinking about James and Lily Potter as his mother and father, and while he had never met them, he had met their shades, and felt their love for him…only now it might not have really been him that they felt those things for.

He couldn't help but ask. "What are your parents like?"

He felt Ginny and Hermione tensing. They knew how much he missed his mother and father, how he might feel about the possibility that he might now have a chance to have living parents.

Harris just shrugged. "They're my mom and dad. We've mostly ignored each other as much as we could for the last decade."

Harry couldn't understand that. "Why?"

"They drink too much," said Harris. "They yell at each other when they get drunk, and if I'm in the room, they yell at me too. I moved out of the house as soon as I was able to, and have had as little to do with them as I could, ever since." Harry saw Dawn reach out and take his hand. He saw Harris's eyes suddenly widen. "Hey, you don't think that they could have known? That they were that way because they knew that I wasn't really theirs?"

"No, Xander," said Willow, giving him a hug. "That had nothing to do with you. Even if they had known, they should have treated you better."

Harry couldn't help but agree. He was sure that, had they lived, James and Lily would have treated any child put into their care a whole lot better than the Dursleys had treated him, or for that matter, how Harris's parents seemed to have treated him.

"I think that, for now, we should concentrate on how to 'fix' this," said Giles.

"Should we fix this?" asked Remus. "I mean…if this is who they are really supposed to be…" His voice trailed off.

"No offence," said Harris. "Even if I really am supposed to be Harry Potter, I kinda like being Xander Harris. I'm not cut out to be anybody's Chosen One. I'm more used to being the Chosen One's sidekick."

Harry saw Harris's friends all smile at that, but he had no idea what he was talking about. He could understand the sentiment though. He often thought that it would have been much easier to go through life, living in obscurity. "I can sympathize with that," he said. "This last week has been the only time I've been able to go anywhere in the wizarding world without someone making a big deal about it, but still, I'd like my old life back. I'd especially like to be able to do magic again."

"Hmm?" asked Willow.

"One of the side effects of this, seems to be that Harry has lost his ability to use magic," said Hermione. "It follows logically that Xander should have picked up his ability."

"That's interesting," said Willow. She tilted her head a bit, as she looked at him intently. "Yes…your aura is pretty much like that of a normal person's. You don't have that something extra that Xander's picked up, or that any of your friends have."

"You read auras?" Harry asked, dubiously.

"Not well, but it's something I've picked up. Still, I haven't noticed Xander doing any magic."

"Without a wand, you probably wouldn't," said Hermione. "Untrained Wizards sometimes do accidental magic when under great duress, but unless something really stressful has happened to him in the last week, I doubt if you would have noticed anything strange happening."

"Most stressful thing that happened was when I started looking like this," said Harris.

Hermione nodded. "Even if you had a wand, it would take weeks to learn even the simplest of spells, except…"

"Except what?" asked Harris.

Harry knew where this was going. "There's a spell that wand-makers use, to match up a wizard with a new wand. Since the new wand is usually going to a child who hasn't learned any magic yet, it doesn't require that the wizard knows any magic. The wand just reacts to them."

"Have you got a wand-maker nearby?" asked Harris.

"No," said Harry, slowly drawing his wand from his sleeve, "but we know one. Hermione thought that this might come up, so we had Mr. Ollivander re-prime this one." He felt very uncomfortable as he handed it across to Harris. "Why don't you give it a wave?"

He watched Harris carefully as he took the wand, and saw his face light up. He swished the wand through the air, sending off a cascade of red and gold sparks. "Wow!" said Harris. "This is just…Wow!" He hesitated for a moment, before handing it back to Harry, obviously reluctant to let it go again.

Harry took it, and laid it down on the table between them. "If you're the real wizard…maybe the wand should be yours."

"I still don't understand how the spell could have switched their powers too," said Ginny.

"I have an idea about that," said Willow. "Um…if I can have one of your hairs?" she asked Harry.

"One of my hairs?" asked Harry.

"Just a quick DNA test to confirm something," said Willow. "Don't worry, I won't keep it."

Harry hadn't been worried about that, before she said anything, but then he started thinking about all the things you could do with someone's hair. Snape probably could have made half a dozen different deadly poisons, that would only affect the one person that the hair came from. He thought about the little bit that he knew about DNA, from his early years in a Muggle school, and what he'd seen on TV. He sometimes thought that the education he had received at Hogwarts was woefully lacking in some areas. He looked at Ginny, Hermione and Remus, and didn't see any indication that any of them thought that this was a bad idea. He'd given Harris his wand for the test, and he'd given it right back. A hair wasn't any greater danger. He reached up, separated out one hair from his head, and plucked it loose. He handed it to Willow.

She smiled at him. "Don't worry. If I'm right, I've already got lots of samples of these." She pulled a glass vial from a pocket, unstoppered it, shoved the hair in, replaced the cork, and gave it a vigourous shake. The vial glowed green in her hand.

"One hundred percent match," said Willow, "which isn't surprising, since Xander hardly matches his old DNA at all, anymore."

"What does that mean?" asked Ginny.

"It means that the transformation goes right down to the molecular level," said Willow. "And since your sort of magic runs in families, it's carried in the genes. And now Xander has Harry's genes, so now he's got Harry's magic too."

"But it's really his own magic," said Harry. "He's the real Harry Potter."

"We know that," said Dawn, "But my Xander was pretty happy with his life, and you might have had some bumps along the way, but I think that you're pretty happy with the way yours turned out. I don't think it will do anybody any good to keep you swapped like this. Better to just switch you back."

"We've been looking," said Hermione. "Even with what Remus told us, we haven't been able to find the spell that Sirius used. The Hogwarts library took some damage during the last battle with Voldemort. Some irreplaceable volumes were destroyed, and some others were removed by Death Eaters before the battle that haven't been recovered. I'm afraid that whatever spell Sirius used, was in one of the missing books."

Willow smiled, while reaching into her pocket again. "We don't need the original spell. I've got something better." She pulled a small, ornately carved wooden box out of her pocket. She placed it on the table and opened it, revealing a glowing green marble, about the size of a Snitch.

"This is a Draconian Katra," she said.


	9. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Hermione gasped.

"What's a Draconian Katra?" asked Harry.

"Soul magic," said Hermione. "I've read about those."

"What's it do?" asked Harry.

"It's Dark Magic," said Hermione. "I've only seen descriptions of what it can do, never any for how to do it."

"Once again, we are moving into the territory of intent," said Willow. "Switching souls, against their owners' wishes: Dark. Switching them back: Light. Nothing is happening here, unless you and Xander both agree to it."

"Will this work?" asked Harry.

"No reason it shouldn't," said Willow. "I've done this before."

"You have?" asked Remus.

"A friend of mine had her soul switched with…someone else, once before," said Willow. "I switched them back."

"So, what do we do?" asked Harry.

"You and Xander touch the Katra at the same time," said Willow, "and your souls swap. "You become him, and he becomes you."

"That's all there is to it?" asked Harry.

"Yep," said Willow.

Harry looked at Harris, who had seemed to be remarkably calm, and unengaged through this whole discussion. "You're okay with this?" he asked.

"If my Willow says it'll work, it'll work," said Harris, "and I've already seen this one work before." He reached out and picked up the glowing marble. He cradled it in the palm of his hand, reaching out across the table to him.

Harry considered his options for a few seconds. He looked at Ginny, Hermione, and Remus, to see if they were feeling any misgivings abou this. While Ginny looked worried, she gave him a nod to indicate that she thought he should do it. Hermione had the look that she got when she'd found something new and interesting to study. Remus was looking like he thought Harry should proceed with caution, and gave him a nod similar to Ginny's. He took a deep breath, reached out his hand, and placed it in Harris's. He felt a burning as their palms connected, and the world spun around him.

When his vision cleared, he found himself looking at…Xander Harris, wearing an eye patch. He looked around and saw that he was on the other side of the table, with Dawn Summers, and Willow, and Mr. Giles. His wife and friends were looking across the table at him.

"Wow! Head rush!" said Harris, who was now beside his wife at the table.

Ginny looked uncertainly back and forth between him and Harris. "Harry?" she asked.

"That would be him," said Harris, pointing at him, at the same time Harry said "I'm here."

"Um…maybe we should switch places," said Harris.

"Good idea," said Willow. Harry and Harris quickly moved around the table to rejoin their friends.

Harry gave Ginny a quick kiss, and noticed that Harris was doing the same thing with his girlfriend. "Good to have you back," said Ginny.

"Well, it seems that we're done here," said Willow, "unless someone has something else?"

"Well, there is one thing," said Hermione.

Harris had stopped kissing his girlfriend. "What?"

Harry grimaced. "I got a rather nasty letter from Gringotts' this morning. It seems that they've discovered that I'm not the real Harry Potter."

"That's the bank with the goblins, right?" asked Harris.

"Yeah," said Harry, "and they can get really nasty if they think that you owe them money." ("Tell me about it," mumbled Willow, and Harry wondered what that was about.) "I inherited quite a bit of money from my—your—parents, only now it's not mine anymore. They want me to repay everything I've withdrawn from the Potter vault over the years…with interest."

"Hey, man, I don't want your money," said Harris.

"That's just it," said Harry. "It's not *my* money. It's yours. There's magic ensuring that it goes to the right person. The magic was fooled, for a time, but now that people know what happened, the magic is going to make sure that the the money goes back to who it should have."

"What if I just gave it all back to you?" asked Harris.

"You don't have to do that," said Harry. "You won't be leaving me destitute, or anywhere close to it. I haven't really touched my inheritance since I left school. My salary pays for all my needs, plus I own one quarter of one of the most lucrative Wizarding businesses there is, and Ginny owns another quarter of it, and I also inherited the Black family fortune, and while the Potters were well off, the Blacks were *rich!*"

"But won't you lose that inheritance too?" asked Willow.

"We checked," said Hermione. "Since it was Sirius Black who made the switch, and it was through his will—made while the switch was active, so that the magical identification of Harry in the will, points to *our* Harry—that Harry inherited, he still gets to keep that."

"Um… How much money are we talking about?" asked Dawn.

"I've got the latest account statement here," said Harry, pulling a scroll from inside his jacket. He handed it across the table to Harris.

Harris unrolled the scroll, and scanned down it. "Uh… Nine-hundred and eighty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-seven Galleons, fourteen Sickles, and five Knuts," he read slowly.

"Yep, and once I repay what I've withdrawn from that account, plus interest, it will be a touch over one million," said Harry.

"One million Galleons," said Harris. "What's that in dollars?"

"About eight million," said Willow.

Harris fainted.

A dozen people seemed to materialize out of thin air. Neville, Ron, Tonks, Dean, Fred and George all Apparated to within a few yards of the table, with a series of *cracks* that sounded like a string of Muggle firecrackers going off. They all had their wands drawn. A half dozen young women—Harry's age, or younger—arrived only a few seconds later. They were armed with an assortment of edged weapons: swords, knives, and in one case, what Harry first took for a short, stout, wand, but the way she held it made him think that she was planning to stab someone with it, not cast any spells.

Willow threw up her hands, and suddenly all the weapons, and all the wands, were floating in the air high above their owners. "Whoa!" she said. "Everybody calm down! We're all friends here!"

"So, why is Xander—that is Xander now, isn't it? I saw you do the swap—on the ground?" asked a short blonde.

"It's okay, Buffy," said Dawn. Harry wondered what sort of name 'Buffy' was; it was almost as silly as some of the names wizards gave their kids. "Xander just got a bit of a shock." She knelt on the ground next to him, and gently patted his face.

"Yeah, everything's alright," said Harry, to his friends.

"Harry?" asked Tonks, sounding, and looking, like a little old woman.

Harry sighed. "Advance Guard, you packed my trunk, 'Constant Vigilance.'"

"Okay," said Tonks. "Wotcher, everyone."

Dawn and Willow looked puzzled. "No, he's the Watcher." They pointed at Mr. Giles.

"No," said Giles. "It's a greeting. Means 'What cheer'."

"Oh."

"Watcher?" asked Hermione. "The Council! You're with the Council of Watchers!" She looked around at all the young women who had appeared around them. "Is one of you the Slayer?" she asked breathlessly.


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"What do you know about the Slayer?" asked the short blonde holding the stubby not-a-wand.

Hermione didn't seem to notice the threatening tone in her voice. "The Slayer. The Chosen One. One Girl in All the World Given the Strength to Combat the Forces of Darkness." Harry could swear that he heard the capital letters in what she was saying. "Is that you?"

The blonde looked very annoyed. "It was me. It's not that simple anymore."

"We used to have a contact with the Council," said Hermione, "But we lost contact with him a few years ago, and we haven't been able to reestablish it."

"Who was he?" asked the blonde.

"Theodore Smythe," said Hermione.

"Never met him," said the blonde. "Giles?"

"He was one of Travers' assistants," said Giles. "He was killed when the First blew up the old headquarters."

"What are you talking about?" asked Ginny, something that Harry very much wanted to know, himself.

"The Watchers are an organization set up to aid the Slayer," said Hermione. "They find her, train her, guide her."

"Control her, get her killed," said the blonde.

"Buffy!" said Giles, with a note of warning in his voice.

"What?" she asked. "It's not like it wasn't true."

"Yes," said Giles, "but let's not air our dirty laundry in public, especially when it is laundry that that has already been cleaned."

"Right," said Buffy. She closed her eyes for a moment, and took a few deep breaths. "The old Council is gone. We're the New Council. It isn't just One Girl in All the World anymore. There are lots of Slayers now." She looked around. "Most of us are Slayers. The only non-Slayers here on our side are Xander, Dawn and Giles."

"Ahem," said Willow.

"Oh yeah, Willow's not a Slayer too. She's just scarier than any of the Slayers."

"Hey!"

"Sorry, Will, but it's still true," said Buffy.

"What are you talking about?" asked Ron.

"The Slayer," said Hermione. "A magical creature imbued with the strength and skill to fight the forces of darkness."

"Who are you calling a creature?" asked a short, dark haired girl.

"Yeah!" said Willow, "Slayers are a hundred percent human! Just with a little magical enhancement."

"And none of it is anything you need to know," said Buffy. "You've got your secret little community of Wizards, and we've got our community of Slayers and Watchers, and no one needs to know any more about the others than they already do!

"We've accomplished what we came here to do. We've got Xander and Harry back in their right bodies. I say our business here is done."

"I suppose," said Hermione, but she looked like she wanted to argue the point. "But what about re-establishing a liaison between your Council, and the Ministry of Magic?"

"What sort of liaison?" asked Buffy.

"The Ministry had a mutual aid treaty with the Council," said Hermione, "but it broke down in the late 90s. We went through a series of, um, less than stellar Ministers of Magic, then, and if they _had_ approached the Council then, I doubt if they would have been very diplomatic in their methods."

"Yeah," said Buffy, "and I doubt if the Council then would have been very open to their overtures, even if they had been couched in the most diplomatic of terms."

"Let's see if we can correct that," said Hermione. "I propose that we set up a meeting between representatives appointed by our Ministry, with representatives from your Council, to see if we can normalize our relations. Maybe we can form a true alliance, to aid each other in our fight against the Dark."

Buffy looked at Hermione carefully for a few seconds, before extending her hand with a card in it. "Perhaps we can," she said. "Give me a call, after you've talked to your bosses. I want to be sure that whoever I'm talking to has the authority to make any sort of deal."

Hermione took the card. "You'll be hearing from me."

"So, our business here is done?" asked Giles.

"Just about." Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a key that he held out to Harris. "This is the key to Potter vault at Gringotts," he said. "It's yours now."

Harris looked at the key in Harry's hand sceptically. "I don't really want it."

"It doesn't much matter what you want," said Harry. "The goblins won't let me near it, anymore. It's yours, now."

Harris took the key reluctantly. "If you insist."

"I do," said Harry. "Hey! Maybe they'll treat you better than they do me! They still haven't forgiven me for the mess we made when we took Hufflepuff's cup from the Lastrange vault…even if the Ministry did agree in the end to pay for the damages. Now they're even less happy with me, and are making noises about charging me with impersonating you."

A distant look came over Hermione's face. "You know," she said. "I might have an idea…"

* * *

That night, Xander made his girlfriend scream out his name as they made love together for the first time in over a week. Nearly two hundred miles away, Ginny Potter was sitting astride her husband's hips, with his hands on her pregnant belly as he groaned out his release.

* * *

Xander was feeling more relaxed than he had in over a week, when he and Dawn entered the Leaky Cauldron. It was good to have his old body back. He didn't even really miss having two eyes. He had gotten used to living with just the one, and having stereoscopic vision again had tended to give him headaches. His brain had gotten out of practice working with two eyes. It was just past noon, and the place was packed. He could tell from the looks that they were getting that some of the patrons recognized Dawn from the picture of her that had appeared in the _Daily Prophet._

He saw Ginny Potter waving to him from a corner table, and he and Dawn made their way through the crowd to meet with her, and Harry.

"Xander!" cried Ginny loudly, making sure that everyone's attention was drawn their way. "It's good to see you again!" She took hold of his hands, and kissed him on the cheek. She released him, and gave a similar greeting to Dawn.

Harry's greeting of them was less ostentatious, but equally warm, giving Dawn a peck on her cheek, and Xander a handshake. They all sat back down at the table and Dawn and Xander started to look over their menus.

"You haven't switched back to your old glasses," Xander observed quietly, after Tom had taken their orders.

Harry pulled the glasses from his face, and looked at their rectangular wire rims. "Well, I haven't been to see an optometrist in years, and these work better than my usual pair," he said quietly. "Plus, Ginny seems to like them."

"They suit your face." Ginny looked at Dawn and smiled. "Someone with taste helped you pick them out."

"Harry never asked your opinion of them, before?" asked Dawn.

"He's had the round rims for as long as I've known him," said Ginny. "Just like his—" She glanced quickly toward Xander. "I mean _your_ father always wore. It never occurred to any of us to see what he'd look like without them."

Xander smiled at her. "Keep calling him Harry's father. Even if he wasn't really, it's what we're going to keep on telling people, right?"

"I suppose," said Harry, "but it's just really weird."

"You and me both, pal," said Xander. "But that's what we decided, and that's kinda why we're here, today."

There was shifting in the crowded pub, as patrons made room for someone barging through the lunchtime crowd.

"Here we go," said Harry quietly, as the last few people parted, making room for Rita Skeeter to pass through them. This was the reason they had met in the Cauldron, at the busiest time of the day: so word would reach Rita, and she'd come to see for herself.

Rita had her note pad out, with her quick-quotes quill hovering over it. "Mr. Potter! How surprising to see you here, with your wife, and … friend." She glanced at Dawn, and it was clear that she had wanted to use a different word. She didn't look at Xander at all.

"Is this the skank who calls herself a reporter, that wrote that pack of lies about us, a few days ago?" asked Dawn, sweetly.

"Yes, it is," said Ginny, "and she's lucky I've calmed down a bit, or I'd be hexing her about now."

Dawn smiled at Rita in a way that would have made most people back away from her. "Don't let me stop you."

"Now, really!" said Rita. "That's no way to treat a member of the press. I was merely reporting what witnesses told me!"

"You mean you were misquoting the responses you got to your leading questions, when they didn't say what you thought they should be saying," said Harry. "But now that we've got you here, in front of lots of witnesses…" Patrons from all around the Leaky Cauldron where looking their way now, and all other conversation in the restaurant had died out. "…let's set the record straight, shall we?"

"Really, Mr. Potter. I always strive to be accurate in my reporting!"

"And yet, you almost always fail," said Ginny.

Rita sniffed. "I have received many high awards for my writing, and am the best selling author in Wizarding Britain, alive today."

"Were those awards for writing fiction?" asked Xander.

Rita seemed to notice him for the first time. "And who might you be?" she asked.

"This is Xander Harris," said Harry. "He's a distant cousin of mine, from America, who has recently moved to England, and decided to look me up." He nodded toward Dawn. "I was helping out his girlfriend, Dawn Summers, showing her around London while she did some shopping the other day, when your photographer spotted us, and then he ran away, before we could talk to him."

"I wasn't aware that you had any living Wizard relatives, Mr. Potter."

"Not many," said Xander, "and I'm not a Wizard. "My branch of the family were Squibs. That's why they left England, over a century back."

Rita frowned at Harry. "And you brought him here? What about the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?"

"Not an issue." Dawn held out her hand, and a globe of light appeared in it. She held her hand up in front of her mouth, pointed at Rita, and blew on it. The globe flew through the air at the startled reporter, and broke into a cascade of sparks when it hit her. "Xander was well aware of magic, long before we met Harry and Ginny."

"Another reason we're here, today," said Xander. "The family left some of their assets in their Gringotts vault. I'm here to update some of the paperwork, check the financial statements, things like that."

"And here comes my brother, Bill," said Ginny. "He works for Gringotts, and will be helping you, today."

"He used to be a curse breaker, but ever since he got married, he's switched over to a safer line of work," said Harry. "Now he works in Gringotts' Wizard / Goblin relations department."

Bill held his hand out toward Xander. "Mr. Harris? A pleasure to meet you."

"And you, Mr. Weasley."

"Please, call me Bill."

"And I'm Xander, and this is my girlfriend, Dawn."

Bill held his hand out to her, and Dawn took it. She couldn't help thinking that Bill Weasley looked ruggedly handsome. She seemed to have a bit of a thing for guys with scars on their faces.

"Miss Summers," said Bill as he shook her hand. "It's an honour."

Dawn felt herself blushing. "Not really. It's my sister—"

"Your own accomplishments are quite remarkable," said Bill. "I read your paper on Narmer's unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, to form the First Dynasty. You argued quite convincingly that he was indeed an historical figure, and not just an amalgam of legendary characters, or a successor to the true unifier of ancient Egypt. Have you seen the Nekhan inscriptions, in Upper Egypt, depicting his father Selk, the so-called Scorpion King?"

Dawn was really surprised by that line of questioning. "Not personally, but I have seen pictures of them, of course."

"You really need to seem them in person," said Bill. "There's a concealment spell overlain on top of them that masks much of the true inscriptions from casual observation. Even without being able to see that, you managed to pull together bits and pieces from many other sources to put together an astonishingly accurate picture of the First Dynasty's political landscape."

"Did I mention that Bill worked as a curse breaker in _Egypt_," said Ginny. "He can go on for hours about people who have been dead for six thousand years."

"No, but it's really fascinating stuff," said Dawn. "Have you ever come across any stories about Ra's Astria Porta?"

"I think it is very strange that an Egyptian god supposedly had access to something that in Latin would be translated to mean 'Star Gate' thousands of years before there was a Latin language," said Bill. "I suppose it could just be a coincidence that the syllables of the words came together like that, or maybe Latin borrowed the roots of some words from the Egyptian. Merlin knows that English is full of words that it pulled from other languages."

"True," said Dawn, "But the Egyptian words for 'star' and 'gate' are completely different."

"Maybe they both drew from some other, older, language," said Bill. "One that we haven't identified yet. Ra just used the borrowed words, without them being incorporated into the Egyptian language. English does that too. A lot of foreign words and phrases are used in specialized cases, without those words going into more general use."

"That's a possibility," said Dawn. "But…"

Xander tried to listen as Dawn and Bill went back and forth about ancient Egyptian, and Latin, and other languages that might have preceded them. It wasn't long before their discusion went over his head. It did have one beneficial side effect: Rita Skeeter used it as cover for her retreat away from them, and many of the other gawkers got bored, and went back to their own conversations and meals.

He turned to Harry and Ginny. "So, does he go on like this very often?"

"Not really," said Ginny. "I think he's happy to have someone he can talk shop with, even though he's not really in the curse breaking business, anymore."

"I still like to keep my hand in," said Bill, "and while I don't spend nearly as much time in the field as I used to, I'm still called in to consult from time to time.

"But for today, Mr. Harris, I'm here to help you navigate your way through the intricacies of dealing with Gringotts' accounts managers."

"A couple of friends of ours already did some business with a Mr. Narlblat," said Xander. He seems to be the front-Goblin for dealing with the Council, and Slayer's accounts."

"And what are you hoping to accomplish?"

"Since the Goblins have decided that I'm the 'real' Harry Potter, what does it take to push through an official name change?" asked Xander.

"For both of us," said Harry.


End file.
